Album Review: Jason Lytle - Dept. Of Disappearance

Jason Lytle has always been a creature of contradiction. His work with Grandaddy straddled paranoia, anxiety, whimsy and humour, and his new solo album does much the same. The ultra-soft delivery of loaded lines such as, “You'll never get away with it/You'll never get away with me” carries a strange mixture of child-like denial and a very adult sense of conviction. His appearance – a plaid-shirt-wearing, trucker-cap-sporting, stubble-faced individual – is completely at odds with the baby-soft voice barely brave enough to float out the speakers.

His new collection, Dept. Of Disappearance, is a surprisingly epic collection of songs that have a striking lucidity and a haunting cinematic design care of sweeping chord structures and production aesthetics that feels like everyone involved was staring off into the horizon when not staring at the mixing desk. The gamut of emotions covered in the record hover around the melancholy spectrum. The sad yearning of Matterhorn rubs up against the bristling agitation of Young Saints, while Hangtown feels like a regretful recollection of a small town life long ago. Get Up and Go attempts to counterbalance it with a lethargic positivity – it's the theme song for a home improvement show for slackers and burnouts.

There's a sly smile buried deep underneath all the theatrical pathos. Lytle enjoys exploring the blue-tinged worlds he creates, and he's good at exploiting all the elements emotionally resonant music contains, but his tunes also have a grounded sense of humour and irony and it makes him seem more fallible and infinitely more human. This is an arresting and highly recommended record.