First impressions can be deceiving. "Don't Shiver," track one on The Simple Discussion's Safelight EP, shakes your hand with its gloves on: Sunny powerpop gait, lyrics you'd swoon over, the sort of roll-down-your-windows melody that gets stuck in your head for hours... On the other hand, the rest of the album plays more like a line in "August Gale": The rain flows down the windows, and it sounds so smooth like the whispers from you. Safelight pours down all the slickness and all the storm of an autumn rain, rolling together simple melodies, fluid vocals and instrumentals, and some kind of quivering conviction into solid, bittersweet pop that seems to resonate all too well.
Colorado band The Simple Discussion began two years ago as Paul Wineinger's acoustic project and took off when Paul and brother Nick Wineinger wrote "Don't Shiver." If you listen to Safelight's full-band version of the song, you'll see how adding a rhythm section (Luke Osborn, drums, and Ryan Williams, bass, on the EP) was a step in the right direction. Though the softness of the other tracks might have functioned decently on just acoustic, the structure and push of the bass and drums add an irremovable sense of drama. The result comes out like a beefed up Scene Aesthetic or a slower Get Up Kids with its own spin.
Everything on this album feels genuine and yet intricately planned. Of course, with that comes a sound that sometimes lacks spontaneity. Though the album doesn't really take any risks, you can count on the band's keen self-awareness to change things up just when you want them to. Are the vocals starting to sound a little run-of-the-mill? Paul goes from breathy lows to a quick falsetto. Guitar chords too redundant? Swirling strums cue in, interlocked with the downplayed bass you shouldn't have dared to ignore. All you have to do is say "drum roll please" and it's there.
Actually, this all happens over the course of "Anatomy of a Battle." It marks The Simple Discussion as a band with great instrumental balance and makes a show of the wide range of the vocals. Even besides Paul's tonal breadth, the singing is clearly taken seriously. Every exhalation is a cathartic, resigned sigh, which soars behind desperate lyrics with a warm and wide-eyed sincerity. Displaying a clarity and gentleness comparable to Copeland's Aaron Marsh, vocals serve not just as an apt instrument to deliver the lyrics, but as an instrument in and of itself. Yet although the songs are undeniably vocal-centric, there's enough going on instrumentally to both support the vocals and add their own words to the big story. Cymbals and vocals both crash out of the gentle front and burst, Explode now, throw it in my face ... Scream it loud so we don't have to pretend that you're right this fight is going nowhere. The Simple Discussion aces atmosphere. Between poignant lyrics and instrumentals, everything ultimately conveys one sweeping story, rich and whole.
The final track, "The Captain and the Crew," strips away the drums and ends the album simple, like clouds parting after the rain. Light, chiming chords breeze you away to someplace far from the storm, far from the darkness, and soon, far from the the music. But you may not want to go away just yet. You might just want it to keep raining.