CD Review: Lovers, I Am the West (Pop Heart Records)

[April 22nd, 2009]

[ELECTRO POP] I’m pulling out of Portland on a train to Seattle, and Lovers’ “I Am What I Don’t Know” plays through my headphones. I didn’t think I had a broken heart, but the combination of the passing rubble and industrial architecture with Carolyn Berk’s aching, pure vocals is almost enough to give me one. Mine wouldn’t be the first heart Berk has broken. “I said my heart is your home/ There’s no guard, there’s no moat at all,” she sings of a promise she couldn’t keep. “And it wasn’t so.” Then the ghostly chorus surfaces again, a blunt apology for all of the collateral damage: “I am what I don’t know, I am sorry though.”

If that admission took guts, so did everything about I Am the West, Lovers’ latest album and a huge stylistic departure for the Portland-based outfit. On Lovers’ last three albums, Berk has been largely accompanied by acoustic instrumentation, giving the band the feel of a fleshed-out singer/songwriter project. And while the songs were almost always fascinating, the choruses were subtle, the drums were buried and the mood was often resigned.

I Am the West is anything but resigned—it’s an electro-pop album: a big-rhythm, hook-laden effort which, musically, is reminiscent of the Cars and the Rentals. Which would be a disaster if Berk hadn’t mastered the balancing act between writing her confessional, literate lyrics and the lovely side of pop convention.

From the opening synth blasts of the robotic “Igloos for Ojos” to the otherworldly Americana outro of the whip-smart “Imaginary Women,” every track on the album features artificial sounds. That through line may be the aesthetic that sets I Am the West’s mood, but it’s Berk’s strength as a songwriter that is Lovers’ backbone.

That songwriting strength is perhaps best demonstrated on the album’s emotional peak, “Tonight,” a crumbling relationship anthem that mixes cold, exacting electronic drums and synthesizer warbles with a warm string section and strummed acoustic guitar. Midway through the song, Berk loses her vocal composure just a touch, and delivers some of the album’s most memorable lines as every instrument climbs behind her: “The blankets look like ghosts out in the yard/ Where the willows are weeping/ The creases on your face from last night look like scars/ I feel everything in secret/ Where have you been sleeping?” More importantly, where has Lovers been hiding? I Am the West is a game-changer; the band won’t remain a secret for long.