School of Language - "Sea From Shore"

School of Language - "Rockist Part 4" (Thrill Jockey 2008)

School of Language – Sea From Shore / Thrill Jockey

I suppose it’s only appropriate that the opening moments of the initial song on the debut record from School of Language would be an exercise in displacing phonetic sounds. Sampling his own enunciations of vowel intonation, Sunderland, England’s David Brewis creates a buoyant backdrop to color his smart pop-rock songwriting with shades of bright curiousness. “I feel you might have taken / too long / for me to feel” Brewis begins as he strings the phonetic symbols into a tapestry of the English language. He sets the stage for his lyrical obsession early: the relationships between people and how strong a variable the notion of time plays within those connections. Every individual is traveling along his or her own plane of nonspatial continuum, a chronological subjectivity of perception. For a relationship to work, not only do personalities and interests need to mesh, but also the paths of individuals need to cross at an epoch where both are ready to accept such an adventure. It’s a complicated process ran mostly by instincts, and it’s absolutely fascinating when you sit down and attempt to break it down. Brewis is striving to do just that with his debut solo record, Sea From Shore, released on Chicago’s venerable Thrill Jockey Records, under the nom de plume, School of Language. As seen above, he obviously gets stuck in reflective, circular, and often times, confusing statements; good thing the man is a master of pop-rock melody as well.

As one-third of the art-pop indie-rock outfit Field Music, Brewis, along with his brother Peter and Andrew Moore, gained almost immediate critical success in their brief three-year existence. An offshoot of neighboring act The Futureheads, the Sunderland trio elaborated on XTC-derived jagged pop-rock by carrying a post-punk aesthetic into chamber-pop territory. Thanks to their irresistible melodic hooks and clever songcraft, the boys charmed critics and swooned most indie-rock audiences. As a solo performer, Brewis doesn’t askew too far from the established structure. His compositions always chug at an uplifting pace, but never one single mph faster. He sets a melody and layers accordingly, highlighting the hooking tones with distortion and hearty amplification, and laying a bass line underneath that always seems to lilt the track with a buoyant fervor. And then there are the impeccable vocal harmonics. I imagine a young David’s record collection must have been overflowing with Beach Boys and Bee Gees LPs.

To be honest, there is not really a lackluster track on the record. As far as personal preference though, the gentle jerking of “Marine Life” takes the prize. Brewis’s supernatant falsetto coils around a simple, start-stop electric guitar hook that seems to continuously expand and layer, jittery, post-punk drumming, a jovial bass line and a climaxing harmonica swell. You want to sing along, but there is just too much going on. The collaborative effort, “Disappointment ‘99” which features both Barry Hyde and David Craig of The Futureheads, is also a highlight, though it resides more in the power-pop realms. With seemingly home-recorded tribal drums pummeling beneath the thick overlapping of electric guitars, the wordless coos of the chorus perform aerial stunts overhead. Lyrical depth is extremely important in making a good album, but as Brewis is well aware, a fine-tuned “ooo ooo ooo” can be just effective, if not more so at moments.

The aforementioned opening track, “Rockist”, which bookends Sea From Shore in four separate parts, displays Brewis’s ability to milk an idea for all that its worth. Don’t mistake that as a negative criticism though. While “Rockist Part 1” and “Rockist Part 4” act as mirror images of each other, in correlation with the lyrical theme, the tracks’ individual attitudes are subject to a differentiation in time. Where the first part feels like a frustrated statement of affection, the final chapter airs on the side of triumph and conclusion. On the latter and final rendition, Brewis wails with a rejuvenated spirit: “The right time to discover / everything, anything / I see your eyes / before the lights break.” I’ve been there my friend. Hopefully she catches you at the right moment as well.