Band
Lost on Liftoff
By the end of Mixtape Blackouts, the much-awaited full-length debut
from Lost on Liftoff, I'm hoarse, exhausted, and not a little
emotionally drained. This is a huge album, where every song delivers a
powerhouse chorus, soaring guitars, crashing cymbals, and booming bass.
Assuming you have the standard amount of self-consciousness most people
possess, you may not want to listen to this in mixed company, for fear
of finding yourself singing along so strenuously the veins are popping
from the sides of your neck and that cute couple your gal wants you to
make friends with suddenly thinks you're a total psycho.
It's rock and roll for the children of the me generation. Where our
parents' rock was full of bravado and chick-bagging, today we get giant
walls of sound buffeting us with admissions like "I'm the one that
failed you." "Maybe You're Right" is a terrific tune of self-awareness,
opening with a warm glow of understanding guitars and finishing with a
chorus that's emotionally wide open: "It makes me feel that there's
something wrong/There's no need to fight."
Back in the 1980s, this kind of thing was done with synthesizers,
rhinestones, and really bad haircuts (okay, everyone's hair was bad in
the '80s), as proven by the wonderfully apropos "Don't Change" cover
that comes at song 12 here. The INXS track was originally released in
1982, with Michael Hutchence and company's horribly named Shabooh
Shoobah (really, what drugs were they on?), and was the kind of track
that iTunes will say is similar to "In a Big Country" or World Party.
But Lost on Liftoff completely own it, and with lyrics like "Don't
change for you/Don't change a thing for me," you'd never know they
didn't write it along with the other 12 songs of loves lost, found, and
somewhere in between.
And how many of their fans were even alive in 1982?
Speaking of fans, those of Lost on Liftoff's self-titled debut EP of
early 2006 will get a little deja vu from the inclusion of "40 Miles"
and "Naked and Wasted" here, but it should be a pleasant experience.
Both are among the best singles I've heard on the local scene in the
past five years (LoL frontman Walt Craven e-mailed me "40 Miles" in
2005 and it got about 500 plays in the Phoenix offices before the band
had even played a show).
The new single, "Learning How to Say Goodbye," lives up to those high
standards. Shane Kinney opens the track with martial drums above
ambient guitars and behind Craven's vocals: "You know I can't take this
anymore/Things we know but we could not change/I shouldn't promise you
anything, and everything." The chorus, "For the rest of our lives,
we'll remember this moment," makes me wonder when rock has ever been
this nostalgic, this vulnerable.
Even Steven Tyler's "Sweet Emotion" was a "backstage lover, set your pants on fire."
"Witness Protection Program" seems to sum up Lost on Liftoff's sound
fairly succinctly, with its "waves that crash around you." The guitars
are always so on, Craven paired with Nick Lambert, who does a lot of
the writing, and the drums are always so open, like you could live
inside them, that the result is often that feeling like you just stood
up after body-surfing, turned around, and got belted in the face with a
wave you didn't see coming. You're not scared, because you know the
ocean floor is right under your feet somewhere, but you're totally
disoriented in a pleasant weightlessness. "What if we could fall into
the open atmosphere?," Craven wonders. Well, exactly.
But 13 singles don't make an album. Luckily, Lost on Liftoff provide a
fulcrum with the five-minute-plus "I Can Hear You in Stereo" as track
seven, a collection of movements, the first a kind of underwater ballad
ending with a closely mic'd Craven getting all quiet before a crescendo
into the chorus. The "stereo" is reflected in the echoing of the vocals
in the verses (and the echoing of Headstart!'s "Boy Who Died in
Stereo"). They switch gears again later, with track 10's "You Idiot"
featuring a spoken vocal style from Craven you haven't heard before,
and an indie rock vibe like the Essex Green on steroids.
An upbeat record that never sounds manic, a thoughtful record that
never gets sappy, Mixtape Blackouts is surprising while delivering
everything you'd expect of a band with Lost on Liftoff's pedigree.
"Goodbye Summertime"? No. Summer's just starting.
