DANCES WELL, DOESN'T SCAN

GUGGENHEIM GROTTO
happy the man
UFO 1016
* * * (of five)

Since their debut in 2003 the Irish duo Guggenheim Grotto (Kevin May and Mick Lynch) have steadily attracted notice. I am, however, among those who have been underwhelmed. It is only with the release of happy the man, Guggenheim’s fifth album, that I’m starting to see what the hype is about, and even now I retain a dose of skepticism. Guggenheim is billed as a “folk-pop’ act, which is not quite accurate. They’re more in line with the alt.rock band Snow Patrol in that they seek to lay down dense dance hall grooves backed by enigmatic lyrics. As a dance band, Guggenheim Grotto does well. May’s keyboards launch the duo into electronica territory, especially when Lynch puts aside his acoustic guitar and picks up the bass. Their sound fills all the aural cracks and is surprisingly full considering there’s just two of them. This is accomplished, of course, through loops and delays. Each is also a fine vocalist, sporting smooth, warm, and sunny tones. What neither May not Lynch is, however, is poetic and here’s where I part company with those keen to praise Guggenheim Grotto. Lyrics are often clunky and immature. Okay, we don’t need dance music to be profound, but redundancy is seldom interesting. In “Her Beautiful Ideas,” for example, the already weak lyrics are framed by the constant—and I mean constant—repetition of two lines: “just can’t seem to get out of bed anymore,” and “let’s get naked and get under the sheets.” The latter line was repeated so often that I wondered if the song was going to outlast the average act of coitus. The same sort of beat-it-into-the-ground writing is find in “Oh Nikita,” where they sing “I’m almost thirty” so often I thought, “Well by that age shouldn’t you have discovered the thesaurus!?” happy the man is easily the best thing that Guggenheim Grotto has done to date and a step in the right musical direction. Now for a creative writing class.--LV