4 out of 5

Label: Merge

Producer: Jim Putnam

I’ll agree – the Radar Bros. sound shifts at a glacial pace.  Listening to their albums, the changes and developments they’ve made aren’t readily apparent unless you start really comparing songs side by side, year by year.  I can sing along to almost every one of their tracks, but play any individual tune and I’d be hard pressed to tell you what lyric is around the bend without confusing it with another song, or even tell you which album it comes from.  The plus side to this is that if you like the RB sound – which is like slo-core Beach Boys, or a poppier Black Heart Procession, depending if you want to start with a more positive or negative take and then down or up-tune it as appropriate – if you dig the general vibe of Putnam’s slightly cartoonish vocals humming vaguely creepy lyrics over gently and slowly strummed guitars, then you’ll be able to pick up any Radar Bros. album and enjoy it.

The downside is you can say that the band has never grown, and that owning one album is to own them all.

But it’s not really true, it’s just that the growth can’t be summarized by a lineup change, or structure, or even sound.  It’s just like… changes in lighting… subtle shifts that flavor the mood…  Most noticeable are the album artwork and being on Merge Records.  The Bros. are a good fit for Merge’s sad folky stuff, and Putnam’s dusty production style falls in line with the clarity a lot of the label’s releases bring to the mix.  But it seemed to announce a more “firm” idea of the band, to me, as prior to that, over a few labels, one EP and two releases, the band seemed amorphous, mysterious.  Like if I stopped listening to them they might cease to exist.  For some reason, jumping to a label with some visibility seemed like an announcement that the band wasn’t just a loose amalgamation of songs played by musicians, but indeed a band proper, and one that would be releasing on a semi-regular schedule… which they have for the years since.  Totally a made-up association in my mind, but it existed nonetheless.  Then that artwork.  On one hand, it fits with the sort of austere, lonely covers of their previous releases, but it’s busier, and brighter.  It speaks less of loneliness and more of being isolated in a crowd.  (And the Surrounding Mountains..?)

And it’s in the music.  Putnam’s lyrics are more directly venomous – if that word applies – previous releases seeming to dodge the darkness through metaphor, this album approaching it fairly directly.  But since it’s delivered so peacefully, you’d never know… the shambling strum of it all is still there, it just rings out a bit more confidently.  Yes, every RB release would probably at least get a 4 from me.  But “Surrounding” did feel – to a follower – like a nice shift in range at the time, and I look forward to their upcoming release (2013) to add another shade to the band’s overall palette.