Sundowner – We Chase The Waves

“We Chase the Waves,” the new full-length from the Lawrence Arms’ Chris McCaughan, is a lesson in newfound maturity from a once-perpetually adolescent songwriter. With a more cultivated compositional style, newfound grownup songwriting chops, and more varied musical influences, McCaughan steps out of his traditional role as a Chicago pop punker and into a new persona most of us never saw coming: he’s an-honest-to-god folk singer.

With 2007’s “Four One Five Two,” McCaughan scraped together twelve catchy, not terribly adventurous acoustic tracks that sounded for the most part like Larry Arms B-sides (and, in a couple of instances,were Larry Arms B-sides). This was by no means a bad thing, but it wasn’t any surprise, either. But “We Chase the Waves” is deeper both in content and composition; these aren’t acoustic punk songs. They’re country without the twang, folk-punk without the politics, Tegan and Sara without the Canada (zing!).

Multi-part vocal harmonies mesh perfectly with guitar riffs that would feel at home on any of Wilco’s first three albums. The album opens by reeking of early Bright Eyes with “In the Flicker,” jumps to Jeff Tweedy for a few tracks, and even exchanges friendly glances with Jack Johnson before settling back down with McCaughan’s own beer-soaked melancholy. In short, he’s tried out a whole drawer of new tricks, and every last one works perfectly.

In a few of these, McCaughan even achieves what some fans may have considered impossible: he’s happy. “As the Crow Flies,” which is as close to a hit single as Sundowner will ever get, is a meditation on McCaughan’s own art and lifestyle that, in each verse, finds another way to say “I’ve got you, babe.” That said, McCaughan has managed to retain his trademark lyrical edge. “Araby,” which will remind the listener of Jenny Lewis’s solo work, punches hard with classic Lawrence Arms imagery and themes of cold weather and bittersweet solipsism.

The record closes with a plodding dirge called “What Beadie Said” that deals with the passage of time and the prospect of impending death. The stark verses are punctuated with backup vocals that make this tune sound like a sort of chain-gang funeral. “I’m just a dark horse with a pale heart/on a cold night/ for a long walk/just a dead flame/fuck the old game/ lay me down, I got a new name,” laments the chorus. If anyone should know about the changing power of time, it’s Chris McCaughan. With “We Chase the Waves,” he’s change personified. And, just like the narrator of “What Beadie Said” says from his grave, it’s for the better.