Nothing's more tiresome than a talented twenty-something who discovers folk-rock and thinks that just because it's new to him, it must be new to everyone else as well. The result is usually an earnest album of jangly, acoustic guitar-based pseudo-folk that sounds groovy to him and his hipster friends and sounds like second-hand
Byrds to everyone else.
Andrew Collberg's debut album may look like that on the surface, but in reality, it's something else entirely. Although On the Wreath pays a glancing homage to a whole host of somewhat like-minded predecessors (alert listeners will hear hints of the
Go-Betweens,
Elliott Smith,
Bob Dylan,
the Kinks, and even
the Beatles here), there is never any sense that
Collberg has done anything less than fully absorb and process those influences, turning them into something that is brilliantly, colorfully his own. "Clouds All of Your Rain" is aggressively but brilliantly old-school folk-rock; "Wait Inside" makes layered guitars sound like marimbas while
Collberg lays out a tender, plainspoken vocal on top (pity about the harmonica, though); "Plastic Bows" is explicitly Beatlesque, which very few can pull off as convincingly as
Collberg does; "Oh Why" is a slow-burning rocker, and "Make It Right" closes things out in a bittersweet, regretful vein, and features the most beautifully mournful trumpet solo since
Chet Baker died. The banjo on "The Tide Below" is unnecessarily cute, as is the autoharp on "Plastic Bows," but both missteps are forgivable in a general context as nearly perfect as this album. This is a brilliant debut from a very promising young talent. ~ Rick Anderson