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Twenty-year-old
Caleb Engstrom's debut full-length, Building
Day One, is a perplexingly
assured work for such a young
artist. Opener "Want," with
its childlike xylophone (or
is it a toy piano?), finger-picked
acoustic guitar, and gentle
cymbal crescendos, is a song
so infused with knowing and
painful backward glances
that you can't help but marvel
at the singer/songwriter's
tender age. After all, this
is only a kid, right? An
art major, starting his junior
year at Illinois' Greenville
College this fall. Take a
look at the photo on his
official bio. Forget Boy
Next Door-Engstrom, with
his delicate features and
all-American blonde, blue-eyed-ness,
appears more like the Boy
Next Door's little brother.
But
brush your reservations aside,
because one listen to the
Maquoketa, Iowa, native's
brilliantly simple, yet often
vague and unnerving, first-person
narratives reveals a plain-spoken,
downbeat sincerity that captures
the disillusionment of those
confusing years between adolescence
and maturity with a painter's
eye for broad strokes that,
upon closer inspection, mask
a deeper texture and countless
intricate details. When he
haltingly sings, "Now I know
that I'll never be young
again/But I feel like I'll
never be old/So where does
that leave me?" the sentiment
is heartbreakingly genuine.
While
the minor-key xylophone and
piano verses of the foreboding "Oh
My God" could be the darkest
melody Spoon's never recorded,
Engstrom makes the sadly
uplifting-and startlingly
intimate-chorus entirely
his own, creating a beautifully
unique moment that stays
with you. As the song returns
to the hauntingly wounded
refrain¾"Yeah, we can't see/When looking through this lens/We're
blinded"¾the sparse instrumentation and backing vocals become increasingly harsh
and distorted, with disturbing
results. When the smoke clears,
leaving only Engstrom's raw
voice singing a madhouse
lullaby (possibly backwards),
you're left unsettled, and
hitting the repeat button
in search of any deeper meanings
the song might contain. This
is powerful, engrossing stuff.
The
most startling thing about Building
Day One is how Engstrom
manages to create such deep
emotional landscapes with
only a few well-chosen words.
Many of the strongest songs
here-including the gorgeous,
cello-driven "Six," whose
enigmatic chorus contains
the lyrics that provide the
album's title, and the tranquil
ballad "OK," with its warm
wash of accordion-consist
of only a handful of words,
written with the directness
and familiarity of a love
note left on a refrigerator
door. Like many young troubadours-think
Pete Yorn at his most humorless-Engstrom's
low-key, but always intense,
heart-on-sleeve delivery
infuses simple, well-worn
lyrics like "You're the one
thing that stays the same/No,
I mean you're the one thing
that is forever changing" with
a profound, tender weariness,
giving the words weight they
might not otherwise have,
and making the simple sound
sublime. | Brian McClelland
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