Zookeeper
Becoming All Things
Belle City Pop
By Eliza C. Kane
There's a new record you need to add to your road trip playlist, and it's brought to you by the latest incarnation of Chris Simpson. Under the name Zookeeper, Simpson and his musical entourage allow Becoming All Things to shun the indie mystique of his former projects (Mineral and The Gloria Record) for the friendlier, lusher motif of a swaggering Texan jam session. Yet it is no barn-raising jamboree; like Austin, where it was recorded, the songs are confidently hip but no less authentically southern.
At first pass the 10-person collaboration -- which never makes a complete appearance on any single track -- could be confused for lost Wilco sessions. The horns, harmonica and trendy folk trappings can't help but draw the comparison, but multiple listens reveal deeper layers and a diversity of influences. The title tune, for example, sweeps in with dissonant piano chords and the ghostly, detached vocals of a Double Fantasy-era John Lennon ballad, whereas "Al Kooper's Party Horn" could blend into Ocean Colour Scene's jittery Britpop hit, “Hundred Mile High City.”
Measure by measure the musicianship is sound -- though not as famously tight as more practiced jam ensembles -- but too many tracks fail to leap from their comfortable refrains into a more complex composition, something with melodic or structural variety. Consequently you might genuinely enjoy the first minute of each track but still find yourself skipping ahead the next. Simpson's vocals, cocky in their imprecise meandering from note to note, often provide a perfect compliment to the instrumental mood, but not without toeing the line of distraction and general pitch.
Of course there are stand outs, such as the feel-good parlor song, "Ballad of my Friends," and the chosen single, "Everyone's a DJ," which offers compelling proto-aphorisms like, "We're all miracles and maybes/trading passion down for safety/It's a compromising world." In these and others, Simpson and company are clearly enjoying the record they are making and one can only imagine the fun they would have putting on a show, especially with songs that lend themselves so well to improvisation. It is an achievement in itself that the band's fluctuating line up (which, on "Boy & the Street Choir" includes "the world" on Rain, Train, and Birds) is able to share the sonic space without cluttering it to excess. With so many hands on one record, such balance is no accident – careful mixing defies the inclination to become sluggish or saturated with a few forgivable exceptions.
Simpson should also be congratulated for managing to pivot around the corny affectations that plague pop and indie artists when they "go" rustic, and cultivating instead an unpretentious experiment whose flaws only serve to make it more endearing. Becoming All Things may not be a masterpiece of rock music nor country, but it has discovered a place to tinker happily in the neither/nor between them with open-ended promise.
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