Album titles can serve many purposes, including no purpose at all. Some bands barely seem to try at all with titles while others seem to be playing a meta game with their fans to see if they get the reference or intent behind it. Among album title tropes, I tend to be simultaneously the most and least interested in self-titled ones. I say least because it’s…merely the band’s name, and nothing more. Not much to discuss or interpret there. Yet in saying they’re “merely” the band’s name, this is both true and false, because if it’s not their debut album, a band using an eponymous title is often communicating something to their audience. This is why I had just said it’s also the most interesting trope to me.
While we’ll always know it as The White Album, the
Beatles seemingly intended it to be self-titled, so you’ll sometimes see it
referred to as The Beatles. Now, of course the better known trope
associated with The White Album is a band doing a double album to
stretch out and do a wider variety of music than normal. At least, when I hear
people say a record is a band’s “White Album” I take it to mean that. Yet
there’s another trope to the phenomenon of a self-titled album arriving several
years into a band’s history, and that’s coming at a point in the band’s career
when they’re changing their sound, changing members significantly, or otherwise
trying to say “this is who we are as a band. It’s not a concept album or a tone
piece or about a certain topic. It’s us.”
I bring all this up to say, despite it neither being
a double album nor self-titled, One Bedroom by The Sea and Cake
has often felt like it should be self-titled. It’s always been amongst my least
favorite records by them, though I’ve come to appreciate (slightly) more its
odds-and-sods approach to song variety. I mean, ‘Sound & Vision’ is the one
cover, ever, the band has released, and it not only ends the album but it’s a lighthearted
and fun moment for a band who, despite being always labelled as
mellow/chill/relaxing/airy, have ironically never really felt FUN on any other
track they’ve made. The rest of the album adds to this mixed feeling, with
tracks either being standouts that are career highs—‘Mr. F’ has a circular
chorus that sticks in the memory, and the lengthy jammy intro of ‘Four Corners’
that opens the record is a classic Sea and Cake groove—or they’re missteps that
water the album down with what should have been b-sides. In particular the
middle of One Bedroom always sags for me, and despite this album being
just under 40 minutes it has that same issue Stereolab’s Cobra and Phases
Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night does where it’s not a bad album by
any means, there’s just a couple too many songs and the pacing is fitful. Which
gets me to thinking this might have been a better EP than an album.
Given that this record followed Oui after 3 years,
and their next record wouldn’t come out for another 4, it’s strange that One
Bedroom feels so undercooked and rushed. It’s one of those releases I’ve
always wanted to take a crack at changing the track order to see if I can make
it either flow better or be more enjoyable. As a result of all of this the
record is one that almost punishes close listening; I’m sure you might know
what I mean when I say, not in an ambient music kind of way, but certain albums
are more agreeable as background noise to another activity instead of listening
intently to it. I’ve gone for walks or sat on the porch drinking beer to Oui
and it is brilliant and rewards such close listening. One Bedroom, as
its name suggests, always sounded best to me when I was doing homework in my
bedroom when I was in school or otherwise focused on something else (reading,
videogames, petting cats, etc).
Still, let’s consider the actual work. What One Bedroom
reminds me of is when you buy a variety pack of beer or chips or something, and
you get to the end of the pack and your least favorite things are the only ones
left. “Well, I don’t hate this chocolate stout, but I don’t love it…” you think
to yourself. That’s One Bedroom: the least good thing in a group of
superior things. If Runner is the album for driving through a city, and Oui
is for Summer afternoons with the windows open and a nice breeze going, then One
Bedroom is for doing homework, certainly literally as I said before, but
perhaps figuratively as you separate the wheat from the chaff in its tracklisting.
On a final note, I don’t give out scores for my reviews
anymore, though in this case because my feelings about One Bedroom are
difficult to qualify, it may help to quantify them with a number. In the distant
past I used a 5 star rating system for my reviews and it always seemed to be
the sticking point with the few people who would comment on this blog, so
eventually I dropped it entirely, mostly because it seemed unnecessary in the
age of streaming and nearly-limitless access to music. By which I mean, you can
go listen to this album in multiple places before you consider “spending money”
on it, so giving Consumer Reports style ratings feels asinine. Yet One
Bedroom sort of perfectly encapsulates what I think of as a 3 star out of 5
album. It is absolutely a 3 out of 5 record, though don’t take this as based on
the fact I described the album much earlier in this review as “odds-and-sods.”
Not every album that has a handful of weak tracks is automatically either a 3,
or even couldn’t achieve a 5. No, One Bedroom would earn this rating
because I think fans of the band would probably enjoy this, while at the same
time, I would never tell a newcomer to start here.
