Son, Ambulance

Someone Else’s Déjà Vu (Saddle Creek)

By Annie Holub
Published: July 13th, 2008 | 9:00am

Son, Ambulance’s Joseph Knapp is onto something with this whole idea of déjà vu. On Someone Else’s Déjà Vu — the band’s third full-length, and their first in more than three years — Knapp’s songs sound vaguely reminiscent of all kinds of things: samba, Pink Floyd, sixties pop, labelmates Bright Eyes, Fleetwood Mac, Crowded House, and even vintage Son, Ambulance, to name a few. With 13 songs, the feeling Someone Else’s Déjà Vu invokes is hardly fleeting, but it’s definitely strange. Individually, each song’s re-creation of a sound works, but on the whole, the album feels disjointed and hard to follow — like the déjà vu of several people at once.

Taken on an individual basis, however, the déjà vu is easier to understand. Someone Else’s Déjà Vu is best listened to song by song; it’s definitely an album made for the age of mp3 players set to shuffle, simply because the familiarity and strangeness of each track is so dense. “Wild Roses” begins with slow piano and vocals (courtesy of labelmates Kianna Alarid and Neely Jenkins of Tilly and the Wall), then lounges around with soul, finally ending with organ. The reverb on “Yesterday Morning” makes it sound straight out of 1969, but with Knapp’s signature laments: “Since you left you for college what can I teach you now, babe?” The intro to “Juliet’s Son” moves into the seventies with oohs, la-las, and a simple guitar melody with Knapp singing “Don’t keep worrying about the pop charts, baby.” “Legend of Lizeth” is epic: “We met in some enchanted forest,” sings Knapp, and the song unfolds into its own forest of musical styles, with a disco shrub to the left and a smattering of psychedelic rock flowers along the path.

This kind of meandering within songs and across albums is brilliant, yes, but you can see how 13 songs worth can get dizzying. Then again, that’s the essence of déjà vu — that the feeling of recognition is both familiar and completely disorienting.

—