Possum in my Room - Acadie: Songs From Vacationland

Ted is a homie (and one of the only people who reads this blog). We toured the midwest together. His upcoming split EP with Danello the Sad Surfer was recorded in my basement. Therefore, I feel justified in my decision to go hard on this thing. I’m not gonna hold back.

I bought this from him at one of his many solo acoustic shows. The CD immediately loses points for its presentation. The cover is just a black paper envelope with “P.i.M.R”, “ACADiE”, and the outline of Maine stamped on it. The art is elegant, but I really wish it was the insert on a jewel case, or even the front cover of a digipak, just so that I could find the damn disc on my shelf. The disc itself is a completely unaltered Verbatim CD-R, the kind that’s still lurking in the discount section of your local Staples. I realize that this project had essentially a shoestring budget, but he could’ve at least written the name of the album on the disc, or slapped a sticker on there. No track listing, no identifying marks, nothing. It’s presented like a demo.

The album starts off strong. We begin with the shimmering Farfisa of “Synechdoche (heaven pt. 1)” which builds into a full band with sped up sequenced synths over top. It makes one feel like they’ve just left the mundane world and entered, if not heaven, then a more strange and peaceful place. Then, “The Unebbing Flow of the Saint John River” winds into a really groovy eight-minute jam out. It almost feels like a less percussion-oriented Bonobo track. Possum in my Room was a solo project at this point, but this is one of the only tracks with additional musicians on it. It’s also the first time we hear Ted’s voice, which is barely contained and yearning on this track. Then we finally get the song that sounds most representative of Ted’s live show and natural songwriting style (with additional multitracked orchestration), the breezy, lilting “Echo Lake”.

Overall, I think this record suffers when it tries to rock. The drum sound, the reverb on the electric guitars, and the vocal performances lend themselves far more to mood than to intensity on this record, so despite “Bar Harbor”’s cool rhythmic skips in the verse, the chorus kind of sucks. The song is much better as a solo or duo acoustic song live.

Normally when I listen to this record, this is about where I stop paying attention. It comes back into focus around track 9 or 10. That’s a shame, because track 5, “White Gown” is a perfectly fun little track, almost reminds me of early Suzanne Vega. “Antediluvian Love Song” feels more like a Danello the Sad Surfer track to me, particularly in the back half. It’s funny and the chorus is catchy but it’s over-multitracked. “Heaven pt.2 (for the forests of Presque Isle)” is pretty and low-key, and would probably make sense as a side 1 closer for a cassette, but on CD it just fades into the similarly understated intro to the eight minute “Glory”. I get what Ted was going for here, a big Jason Molina/Explosions in the Sky bang to open up side 2, but the whole mystique of those bands is that they tracked live with a full band, and everything sounds composited on this track. It’s a good concept with merely okay execution, and the drums and rhythm electric in particular drag this one down.

Fortunately, we pick back up with quick “Hymnal”, with a stripped back but intense instrumentation and great poetry on top of it. “Portland” brings back the banjo and synth that had anchored the first three tracks, but the vocals are a little lax for my taste. “Ktaadn” is a nice little palate cleanser of an interlude. “For Those Long Forgotten Cemeteries” is a fun stomp-clap song and “Canis Major” closes out the record in a satisfying way.

So, the album drags heavily in the middle and looks like shit, but the first few and last few tracks are some very well done bedroom music that lean towards the organic. The overarching themes of Maine, of love, of death, and of temporality anchor this record together in a cool way, and I’m excited to see what Possum in my Room does next now that they’re a full band.

Acadie: Songs from Vacationland by Possum in my Room is a bad album, but I like it.