Dntel "Dumb Luck" (Sub Pop)
By Trey Perkins
Friday. Jun 08, 1:41 PM
More lame collaborations than a half-assed Band Aid benefit… but without the benefits.

Alright, I’ve had it with Jimmy Tamborello (aka Dntel). I was over him after the upteenth EP / lame remix from Give Up came out. Shit, I was over him when people tried to explain to me that The Postal Service “really summed up how he/she felt right now.” I reviewed Figurine about two years ago, and the first time I drafted that review, I didn’t realize it was Tamborello prior to teaming up with Ben Gibbard, and I was still annoyed. If it didn’t work before the release of Give Up, it’s not going to work afterward. Now, I may be laying into him a little too hard for Give Up: that was a collaboration between himself and Gibbard. When I got Dumb Luck in the mail, an auspicious mood washed over me because maybe it was high time to give Dntel a second chance. Maybe I’d been too hard on him and blamed him for creating a generation of whiney man-babies who wet the bed to “We Will Become Silhouettes.” Yes, I know. I cannot blame the artist for how people respond to his or her work. I know this detraction says nothing of the music. However, in all honesty, there’s nothing even remotely ear bending about Dumb Luck and, in the end, history will treat it as a series of collaborations with people Tamborello likes to work with. Even in comparison to something like Give Up, which could be considered another “collaboration album,” Dumb Luck contains none of the energy and absolutely lacks any and all slap-happy schoolboy giddiness myself or others felt the first time they cued up “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.”

The conclusion I’d reached by the end of nearly two solid weeks of giving this album a second chance? The only track worth listening to is “To a Fault” (featuring Grizzly Bear). It’s the only entry that doesn’t put me to sleep AND where the collaboration doesn’t overshadow the music and serve as a distraction. In other words, with or without Grizzly Bear, it’s a solid track. I can’t say the same for the other songs. Take away Conor Oberst’s voice and “Breakfast in Bed” should have never left Tamborello’s laptop. Even that “warm” sampler sound that Tamborello has become so noted for doesn’t impress me. Why? Because it’s easy… almost too easy. Recording an entire album on a laptop can be either a blessing or a curse. Tamborello may have a certain finesse in the way he arranges beats and the plethora of electronic noises he crams into each track, but in my own experience of recording music via computer, anyone with a textbook knowledge of how a program like Cakewalk, Pro Tools, or Logic could do what Tamborello does. The only thing said anonymous laptronica composer lacks is enough connections with the industry to get a veritable indie-rock who’s who to provide a melody and a decent hook to sit gracefully atop the electronic samples, etc.

At this point I may be going outside of Dumb Luck, but with the ubiquitous nature of laptronica, I’m beginning to wonder if programs like Cakewalk, Pro Tools, and – even worse – Fruity Loops have made it so that the technical precision and genius it used to take to write a good hook aren’t even required anymore. I may have ventured into the old analog vs. digital debate, but I feel albums like Dumb Luck, since they are so saturated with computer-based noises, raise this very question. Put it another way: back in the day, recording a track and getting studio time (not taking into account inflation) was probably comparatively way more expensive because it was a much more time consuming process. Hence, artists had to be able to nail a take in as little a time as possible, and they had to do it without the benefit of post-production effects, which are provided by this whole new generation of recording software. At the end of the day, these artists were probably much better musicians and more in touch with their instruments than someone who has the benefit of doing overdub after overdub and take after take on a laptop. Don’t like the way this part sounds? Throw in a little delay that’s already synched up with the time signature, and it’ll be good to go! Why, the computer obviates the need for any knowledge of time signature! My point rests in this simple fact: Led Zeppelin’s debut, released in 1969, only took probably 24 total hours to record. Tamborello’s bio states that Dumb Luck took him five years. We’ll probably remember Led Zeppelin for a far longer time than Dumb Luck, and despite the inherent differences between Zeppelin and Dntel, at least Zeppelin could crank out an album in a week’s time that isn’t a snooze to listen to, even after nearly 40 years.
www.jimmytamborello.com
www.subpop.com

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Trey Perkins

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