H E A R__I T

"This is the Day"
- Ivy
(704k)

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T A B L E__T A L K

Do you love real country music but loathe Garth Brooks-style treacle? Real country fans line up in Table Talk's Music area

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R E C E N T L Y

Fiona Apple, Live at the Warfield
San Francisco
Sunday, December 14, 1997
(12/16/97)

You Am I
Hourly Daily
Sire
(12/15/97)

Flaming Lips
Zaireeka
Warner Bros.
(12/12/97)

X
Beyond and Back: The X Anthology
Elektra
(12/11/97)

Various Artists
Paint It, Blue: Songs of the Rolling Stones
House of Blues
(12/10/97)

BROWSE THE
MUSIC ARCHIVES

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V O W E L L

Sound Salvation
By Sarah Vowell
Survey says ...
Give the people what they want
(12/12/97)

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F E A T U R E

Paint it black
By David Bowman
A prayer for His Holy Hipness, Johnny Cash
(12/05/97)

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___ivy

- - - - - - - - > APARTMENT LIFE
_________[ Atlantic ]_

BY JOSHUA KLEIN | Ivy is awash in subtle contradictions. The band is defiantly pop, though by no means popular. The music is dour, but never depressing, the musicianship delicate, though never flimsy. Ivy's songs possess a shadowy quality, hovering in the air like the quiet, dreamscape haze that follows a spring thundershower. Ivy embrace this rainy day ideal, showering the listener with hook after hook, but never blinding him with ultrasweet rays of post-storm sunshine.

Ivy's sophisticated and pleasant new album, "Apartment Life," flows with impeccable taste and songcraft, picking up where the band's somewhat drab debut, "Realistic," left off. There are no surprises to be found on "Apartment Life"; rather, the band has enacted a series of refinements that lend the new songs the definition that their predecessors lacked. Fuller production (courtesy of the band) brings intricate details to the fore, drawing the listener deep into Ivy's intimate world. Horns embellish a few tracks, like the oddly peppy "This is the Day," but the band avoids the egregious over-arrangements that typically accompany such dabbling. And prominent guests such as Dean Wareham (Luna) and James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) drop by to lend their support; "Back in Our Town," co-written and sung partly by Iha, is a particularly haunting close to an already downbeat album.

If Ivy traffic in sullen gloom, they avoid the hopeless fatalism and Goth posturing of similarly minded sourpusses. The dark mood is tempered, perhaps, by bassist Adam Schlesinger, who doubles as one-half of the Fountains of Wayne duo and wrote the Oscar-nominated title track to the film "That Thing You Do!" -- two deliriously perky pop projects at odds with Ivy's smart melancholia. No doubt the other members of Ivy share Schlesinger's love for chiming guitars and buoyant songs. But Ivy seems comfortable enough with themselves to admit that "pop" does not always mean "happy," a subversive enough sentiment that gives the band some of its edge. Each nugget of despair comes coated with sweet melodies and surefire arrangements.

Credit singer Dominique Durand, whose breeze of a voice remains the focus throughout the 12-song disc, for supplying much of the spooky menace and simultaneously shining through her polished surroundings like a beacon in the fog. Singing with an irresistible French lilt, Durand (a Paris émigré who's married to guitarist Andy Chase) flirts with ennui, relaying tales of failed relationships, tired love and general existential malaise. Her voice is weary and radiates with the fallout from some vague emotional disaster that happened long ago, but has only now begun to sting and throb. Likewise, "Apartment Life" is a perpetual aftershock, a keen selection of wilted sentiments well suited to waiting out any emotional storm.
SALON | Dec. 17, 1997