Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky suggested that after A Ghost is Born’s aggressive experimentation, augmenting their Americana-based songbook with feedback drones and Krautrock slow-burners, the band had decided to take it easier. Given the individual pedigrees of the members, the move was only slightly puzzling. Drummer Glen Kotche, whose first album with Wilco was their undeniable masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is known for his work in the field of experimental percussion and has worked with the Kronos Quartet. Nels Cline, the guitarist who first recorded with Wilco on Sky Blue Sky, has freaked out with everyone from Erika Elder and Thurston Moore to Mike Watt, his signature brand of confrontational free jazz upsetting Jazzwise readers for over 20 years. Even songwriter and band leader Jeff Tweedy has been known to get weird; Loose Fur found him offering up two albums of skewed prog-rock and altered pop with Kotche and Jim O’Rourke.
But then there’s the other half of the band. Bassist John Stirratt’s extracurricular activities have been exceptionally tuneful, most notably his ’70s yacht rock project The Autumn Defense, whose co-founder Pat Sansone would go on to join Wilco and has lent his guitar, keys, and percussive talents to the similarly leaning soft rock of Ryan Adams, The Clientele, and Josh Rouse.
All of that brings us to keyboardist and laptop wrangler Mikael Jorgensen and his band Pronto’s debut album, All Is Golden. Apologies to Mr. Jorgensen for taking such a damned long time getting to the point, but the info is pertinent. Out of all of the Wilco dudes, he’s the most like Tweedy in his tendency to go either way: crafting artier, more difficult fare, or more traditional, AM radio-inspired material. His background at SOMA Electronic Music Studios with John McEntire and Tortoise suggests some heady jams, but All Is Golden, several years in the making, bears little evidence of that background, even while boasting a lineup that features members of Califone and Isotope 217. No, the record proudly hearkens back to the early- to mid-’70s heyday of AM singer/songwriters like Randy Newman or Carol King, often pairing those familiar, dense piano-pop chords with a studied dose of white boy funk à la Steely Dan.
And honestly, I’m a sucker for this stuff. When Pronto is on, like the bouncy, lead-off track “Listen Lover,” with its hard left and right-panned “Reeling in the Years” guitar solo blaring in my headphones, they are really on. “All Is Golden” finds the band sounding very Chicago, with a hearty horn-section leading the tune through its second verse. "Once we were beautiful/ And the tracks were very small," Jorgensen sings before the sax solo. I’ve long held the belief that a pop band should get one, maybe two sax solos a career, and as if Pronto somehow knew of my stupid creed, they went ahead made it a perfect one: tuneful, short, and to the point. Not everyone can pull off “Jungleland,” and these guys are wise not to try. The album is front-loaded, with the next couple tracks really working: the piano ballad “Good Friends Have Gone,” the multi-tracked vocal pop of “When I’m On the Rocks,” the brilliant kiss-off anthem “Precious Like a Sneer” ("So hello asshole/ Or is it mister now?") sounding like a depressed Hall and Oates jam. I know I’m supposed to hate this stuff, like Diet Mountain Dew, but so help me, I can’t.
The second half of the album is a bit more objectionable. “Monster” tries on the rock riffs of the first track, but sounds much, much goofier. “Big Sleeved Man,” the subdued hangover ballad, is marred by its lyrics, strange non-sequiturs about heat sources and fabric softeners. There’s so little else going on in the song — just tremolo guitars and dramatic organs — that you can’t help but be struck by the awkwardness of the lyrics. “Unexpected Vex” again aims for another big rock moment, but falls flat. It’s the worst song on the record; distorted guitars and stadium straight eights on the bass don’t register. “Say It All Night” recalls the sound of the record’s early moments but lacks the messy hair and wide-eyed charm.
Luckily, the band doesn’t stay down. “Mrs. Bruford” pairs the Stereolab complexity of synth and organ lines with a stutter-step dance beat. It’s as ambitious as Pronto gets, and the risk pays off. “Had & Have” and “I Think So” close out the record, the former pretty and subdued with the kind of gentle, American Beauty pop that was so prevalent on Sky Blue Sky, while “I Think So” goes for the boogie rock vibe like, well, the songs on Sly Blue Sky that don’t seek to “mellow out.” It’s certainly not bad (that prominent sax intro is pushing it, though), but overall, a bit underwhelming. Pronto seem to lack the violence that this kind of thing needs to work; it rocks but just barely, coming off too gentle, too restrained. The band fares better when going for the pop jugular, choosing the Runt or Something/Anything Todd Rundgren model over his “heavier” stuff with Utopia.
In retrospect, maybe I made too big a deal of the whole, ‘avant-garde’ or ‘traditional’ angle. After all, Phil Collins does some bad-ass stuff on some of Eno’s best records. Ian McDonald left King Crimson and started freaking Foreigner. Peter Gabriel did some wicked work after leaving Genesis, and he’s since wandered into polite, world-conscious pop. The trick seems to be combining the best of both words, the unabashed tunefulness with the adventures, unexpected elements. Pronto’s best songs hint at a more crossbred approach, and perhaps subsequent albums will feature the band cutting a bit looser. At any rate, there’s some stellar songcraft to be had on All Is Golden, even if you’re a bit embarrassed to be jamming this in the car while all your buddies are talking about whatever band is big at The Smell this week.
1. Listen Lover
2. All Is Golden
3. Good Friends Have Gone
4 .When I'm On The Rocks
5. Precious Like A Sneer
6. Monster
7. What Do You Know About You?
8. Big Sleeved Man
9. Unexpected Vex
10. Say It All Night
11. Mrs. Bruford
12. Had and Have
13. I Think So
More about: Pronto
