Castanets is the alias of Raymond Raposa, an indie-folk journeyman who comes across as particularly world-weary on In the Vines, his third album from Sufjan Stevens’ label Asthmatic Kitty Records. Though the liner notes credit no fewer than 17 people in his revolving cadre of background musicians — including the prestigious Mr. Stevens himself — the album is predominantly a quiet and sparse affair, entirely consumed with Raposa’s dark and moody introspection. Though the subtle nuances and sonic surprises laced throughout In the Vines reward careful analysis, the album is too frustratingly inconsistent for most listeners to make the effort.
Kicking things off is “Rain Will Come,” which incorporates Raposa’s heavily reverberated vocals blending into the dreary wallpaper of a fingerpicked acoustic guitar. Instead of developing this depressed tone, however, the song quickly devolves into a distortion-heavy haze, ending in no less than a minute of chirping blips and static.
The same trick is repeated in the last two minutes of “Three Months Paid,” a song that gets considerable use out of the canned sounds on a MIDI keyboard. Beginning with a setting that must have been labeled “oboe,” the keyboard twists its pitch into a pretzel of intermittent blips before switching over to a flanging “chorus.” But it’s a shame the track is backed by such a great drum line, which languidly alternates between the earthy boom of a kettle drum and the terse chirp of a woodblock.
Of course, this type of oddball percussion appears several times throughout the album. A rumbling hand-percussion, recalling Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective, backs “Strong Animal,” and another track, “And the Swimming,” features the minimalist “dum–pa” patternof a drum machine hovering in the background.
Despite the consistent inability of In The Vines to turn its thematic components into engaging songs, there are diamonds strewn about this rough. “This Is the Early Game” features an alt-country twang that would find itself sitting comfortably on a Neko Case album, and “Sound Like a Train, Wasn’t a Train” ends in a gentle, ambient keyboard melody. Still, a handful of tracks are genuine successes, like the two-minute gem “Westbound, Blues,” an up-tempo strummer that makes perfect use of Raposa’s gravelly, untrained voice. “Oh Annie, you have my heart/ But the city has my flesh,” he sings with resignation while delicate voices harmonize behind him. Almost as good is “The Night Is When You Can’t See,” with its jazzy, flittering piano, a tasteful baritone saxophone and endearingly circular lyrics: “Mom, we don’t want to be/ One of those kinds that don’t know what kind they are.”
The times when Raposa’s aesthetic vision succeeds, however, suggest that Castanets has a promising career ahead. Unfortunately, those times just don’t happen enough on In The Vines.
