Never heard of Guster? This album will simply knock your socks off. Fancy yourself more of a Guster aficionado? At first listen, Easy Wonderful may seem poppy and forgettable. However, given a little more play time, the sixth studio album from this Boston band has the potential to be an elegant addition to Guster’s already beautifully variant discography.
The opening track of Guster’s Easy Wonderful, “Architects and Engineers,” is reminiscent – and thankfully so – of much of the band’s previous work. As soon as the first track ends, however, the album takes a sharp turn into some interesting musical territory, not necessarily typical of Guster’s established alt-rock sound. With the addition of a tacky synthesizer and several other unrecognizable sound-producing machines on this album, Guster’s arsenal of musical instruments has gone from traditionally clever (with its use of harmonicas and bongos) to just plain bizarre – a detriment to the band’s overall sound and album quality.
But it must be said that as a unit, this album will put smiles on the faces of listeners throughout. With a few misleading track introductions – in which, based on the first few bars of the song, the audience is lead to expect a much different style of track than is delivered – Easy Wonderful winds up playing a delightful kind of joke on its audience, which suits the laid-back and unusual Nashville setting in which much of the album was recorded.
After several unproductive years of toiling in an underground New York studio, the band took their entire production to Tennessee, a move which had a definite impact on the resulting tracks. Shifting from a more pensive, slightly darker sound on early albums Goldfly and Lost and Gone Forever, Guster seems to have been moving toward a more pop-oriented project for their last few albums, and they have now successfully achieved that status.
Tracks such as “Do You Love Me” (the breezy, catchy first single from Easy Wonderful), “What You Call Love,” and “That’s No Way To Get To Heaven” are most evocative of Guster’s earlier work, with a heavy focus on vocals, harmonization of the two lead singers, and relatable – if occasionally somewhat cheesy – lyrics.
However, these stand-out selections are generally not backed up by a large cache of other similar contributions. The overarching themes of the album – love, happiness… and Jesus – are not surprising to Guster fans, and while there is a general lack of depth to these subjects, the band’s move to a more universally optimistic attitude produces a satisfying set of tunes.
While a case could be made against this album, and its clear religious/pop music influence, Guster’s latest proves to be a solid continuation of the band’s traditionally beautiful vocal harmonization, and of the pure musical talent brought to the studio (and stage) in album after album. While Guster turns an eye toward the current state of our world in tracks like “This Could All Be Yours,” we turn an ear toward their newest successful effort in Easy Wonderful, which is just as sublimely effortless as the album title suggests.
3.5 out 5 stars
