When Camper Van Beethoven started making records in 1985, they truly seemed unstoppable and inspired. They released three albums within an eighteen-month span and not one of them felt rushed or featured any ill-advised turns; the mixture of punk rock snot, college rock weirdness, a hippy's love of folksy melodies and a progressive desire to cross generic lines with impunity was fully formed and totally accessible for the right minds. Kids who didn't really fit in with any crowd (just as was the case with the band) found a cathartic peer in Camper and began singing the band's praises so loudly that they got the band on the corporate radar. They ended up signing with Virgin Records but a succession of incompatible producers saw the band's records released on that label irreparably hobbled and the band eventually just collapsed in frustration in 1990. Since then, there have been a couple of well-received reunions (the first was in 1999) and the band has managed to record a couple of passably respectable albums of material (literally – Tusk was passable and New Roman Times was respectable) which have put a bit of steam back in the band's stride but, to be perfectly critical, the quality of those releases hasn't been all it could be because it hasn't felt like the band's heart was in it.
It may have taken a while, but Camper Van Beethoven has finally emerged from a nearly ten-year haze of inactivity with La Costa Perdida – an album which truly feels like a return because the band has rediscovered and accepted its will to be different without offering anyone any apologies for it.
“Being different again” might lead some listeners to think that Camper Van Beethoven has rediscovered some roots on La Costa Perdida, but that isn't exactly the case. No one is taking skinheads bowling again, the band has matured beyond that; they've become startlingly accomplished musicians and tunesmiths here, and none of these ten songs falter away from presenting that. In that way, Camper's weirdness has become more classic in its angle of approach – more in the vein of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart than Sonic Youth or the alt-rock and post-punk crowds.
The ease with which the band has aged is apparent from the very beginning of “Come Down The Coast,” the opening track on La Costa Perdida. There, amid lush acoustic guitars and straight-faced, balladesque structures, singer David Lowery re-introduces himself and his band (Greg Lisher on guitar, Victor Krummenacher on bass, multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel and Michael Urbano on drums – with some occasional help from Chris Peterson) as being powered by a far more straightforward energy, and the musicianship is just striking; here, the play is smooth and confident instead of being contrived, frustrating or awkward, and the result is remarkably easy to listen to. Some readers may scoff and say that such simplicity can't possibly sound like what they've come to expect from Camper Van Beethoven, but it does and it sounds really good. The songcraft is solid and tight, and the delivery is both ornate and beautiful.
After “Come Down The Coast” makes longtime fans' eyes widen with its departure from what could only be called the Camper Van Beethoven standard, the band immediately starts to dig in earnestly in order to see just how far they can take the idea. On “Too High For The Love-In,” Lowery trips through a beautiful (and totally surreal) garden of Eden setting with the help of a heavenly chorus of back-up voices before falling from grace into a lonely desert expanse in “You Got To Roll” (which actually comes through complete with rattlesnake maracas and spurs that jingle-jangle-jingle) and finding redemption in that solitude (see “Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out”) before soaring off into other unusual directions to marvel at other new, abstract and wonderful mirages. At each turn, there's something new – only it isn't new at all; were any other band the ones responsible for La Costa Perdida (say, the Meat Puppets – for example), it would be much easier to see and understand where the album was coming from but, because it is Camper Van Beethoven, it just seems that much more vibrant because it's not what fans expect of this band; it's close but just a hair off-center, and that is one of the best parts. That ever-so-slight twist is both unsettling and exciting.
Artist:
www.campervanbeethoven.com/
www.myspace.com/campervanbeethoven
www.facebook.com/CamperVanBeethoven
www.twitter.com/CamperBeethoven
Download:
Camper Van Beethoven – "Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out" – La Costa Perdida
Camper Van Beethoven – "You Got To Roll" – La Costa Perdida
Album:
La Costa Perdida will be released on January 22, 2013 by 429 Records. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
