Tift Merritt has been around awhile, and has earned her share of accolades, but her newest album aims pretty low. The first song, “Mixtape” gives us a good idea of what’s coming. Most mixtapes don’t really aim to blow you away. They’re made for comfort, to remind you of someone, and to give you a familiar mix of (mostly) the old, and a little of the new. Much of the beauty of a mixtape, after all, lies not in the music, but in the fact that it’s been made for you, and for at least during the duration of making it (if not for much longer), somebody was thinking of you.
But See You On The Moon wasn’t made for us; it was made for everybody. And the deeper trouble is that mixtapes get old and wear out, not just because they can’t take it physically (as those with large cassette collections will readily attest to), but because they capture at best a moment in time. They aren’t meant to last forever.
So it is with See You On The Moon as a whole. “Mixtape” is a catchy song, but thin, with strained and clichéd lyrics (“I’m like a rare b-side”). And honestly, the mixtape metaphor is pretty much dead. Does anyone make mixtapes anymore? Do people still record in analog? Does anyone even know where to buy a tape player anymore? (Seriously. I could use one.)
Some of the songs pick up the pace a little—“Engine to Turn” is about getting up and getting through the day, even when you don’t have the energy or the will to do it. “The Things That Everybody Does” gives us Merritt’s voice at its lilting best. But the lyrics here don’t bear the weight of her beautiful and lithe voice, and the verses sometimes veer off into the patently nonsensical. “I could fly off and leave/On the wings from a unicorn’s breast/with my typewriter strapped with diamonds to my chest/But how could I go with breakfast not over yet?” She lost me at “unicorn’s breast.”
There are some highlights here. “Six Days of Rain” sticks with a simply lyrical refrain, and picks up some real momentum. And who doesn’t love yet another cover of Kenny Loggins’s “Danny’s Song”? The middle of the album, however, is soggy and sloppy, only occasionally saved by a decent guitar lick.
The problem with Merritt’s voice is on ample display throughout the album: sweet at times, it can easily slip into the saccharine, and her voice’s emotional power gets lost in wave after wave of slow, sleepy melodies. The title track, “See You on the Moon,” is one of the few slower songs to reach a real emotional high. Apparently, it’s about her dog, to whom the album is partly and cutely dedicated (“Lucy, the greatest dog the world will ever know.”).
The two songs that close the album give a sense of how powerful Merritt could be as a singer if she added more instrumentation—trumpets, piano, harmonica—and avoided the sag in some of her slower songs. Plus, excepting the very best singer-songwriters, listening to just a girl with a guitar gets a little old after a while. “Bar With a T.V. On,” easily the most upbeat and exciting song on the record, is inexplicably tagged on as the last track (worse, it’s a “bonus” track). “Bar” should’ve been put earlier in the album, to break up the weepy numbers and pump some much-needed life into the album.
Like many mixtapes, this album will grow on you the more you listen to it. There is enough emotional space here to insert your life and your story into it. But time with this album isn’t necessarily time well spent. If you want good music, you should find it elsewhere. And if you want a decent mixtape, you should make your own.
Track List:
1. Mixtape
2. Engine to Turn
3. The Things That Everybody Does
4. Six More Days of Rain
5. Feel of the World
6. Never Talk About It
7. All The Reasons We Don’t Have to Fight
8. Live Till You Die
9. Papercut
10. See You On the Moon
11. Danny’s Song
12. After Today
13. Bar With a T.V. On (Bonus Track)
