Music
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Released February 13, 2007
Mixtape Blackouts
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.
more »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.
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Released January 31, 2006
Lost on Liftoff EP
Lost on Liftoffs self-titled debut EP has no business being released in the dead of winter. The bright heat it radiates only makes us pine for the warmth of summer rays all the more. Oh, the sentiments are dark, sure, wonderful retrospective melancholy mixed with plenty of jilted bitterness, but theyre delivered with such pop intensity you can veritably warm your hands by them.
more »Its no surprise that former Gouds Thumb and 6gig frontman Walt Craven professes a simple focus for his third foray into the Portland music scene and beyond. The song is king, he says. The songs are the spotlight and not any one particular person or instrument.
Thats a lot easier to say when you are surrounded by the talent Craven is in Lost on Liftoff. He counts himself lucky Nick Lambert (Chaos Twin, guitars and vocals), drummer Shane Kinney (Broken Clown), and bassist Dan Walsh known as Shifty (Chaos Twin, The Clay People) called him up and asked him to join a project theyd been playing around with for a year or so.
Ive known Nick for a long time and I knew that Nick was a great songwriter, so I was pretty excited, says Craven. I was floored by the songs that they were working on and I called Nick back immediately and said, "I'm in".
Good thing for us he did. The four-song tease they release January 31 is loaded with huge singalongs and compelling rock and roll. Thats right, rock and roll. Can we be excused if we like to risk hearing damage in the car on the way to work? No, you cant have a conversation over this. Shut up and nod your head.
The songs are full of progressive songs that love every bit of the verse-chorus-verse construction, but dont think just one type of verse, or one type of chorus, is quite enough for one song.
There isnt a throwaway transition or verse on this entire EP.
40 Miles is the obvious single. It separates itself immediately with the two guitars repeating a quick 16-note, measure-long lick that carves out a back-ended high hook. Walt enters over the still-spare background: Forty miles to go, and there is no summer/ could you take me home? Could you be yourself? Kinneys drum s punctuate the end of each line, while the guitars support in a kind of holding pattern, like restless caged animals. I can feel the sway beneath my feet as we go...
An entreaty serves as transition to the chorus before, whammo, here comes the big singalong. Youll have it down by the time the first listen ends, so I wont bother typing it out, but dont forget to listen for Kinneys snare. It has some interesting deviations, sometimes solidly on the one, other times throwing in little hiccoughs on the 2 and 4. Dons miss his fills, either, coming into the chorus. Not that you could.
The song is just as just-plain-catchy as anything Blink 182 ever wrote, but with more depth of feeling. It doesnt feel that disposable, nor does it feel written for a 14-year-old girl. Though the 14-year-old girls ought to like it just fine (those who forget that 14-year-old girls drive the record market are destined to become underground). The jokes are simply too obvious, but Ill say it anyway: There ought to be a little bit more 14-year-old girl in all of us.