Skip to content

The Last Place

  • Fever Zone

Familiarity mostly works in the L.A. indie popsters' favor on their taut, tuneful second album, a song cycle about a relationship gone awry.

When it started going around that lovelorn L.A. indie popsters Army Navy's sophomore set, The Last Place, would be a song cycle about a relationship gone awry, a writer friend made an excellent point: The funniest thing about a power-pop concept album about being torn apart by love is that every power-pop album is a concept album about being torn apart by love. But while Army Navy's dissection of those post-relationship stages of grief over chiming guitars might seem old hat to fans of the genre, here familiarity mostly works in their favor.

As on their self-titled debut, Army Navy's jangly chords, insistent rhythms, and lyrical treatises on love cop copiously from the heroes of the form: Teenage Fanclub, the Posies, and Big Star, with even a little Superchunkian heft on the burlier numbers. But, as our Jayson Greene pointed out in his review of the band's self-titled debut, "being a well-studied song encyclopedia is half the point" of pure power pop like Army Navy's. While many close readings of the heartbroken past ring out on The Last Place, they're never so studious as to be dull. The playing's always spirited, producer Adam Lasus lends the disc a warm, ingratiating sound, and the songs are both taut and well-considered in their arrangements. The Last Place is punchy and stately alike; the hooks aren't necessarily the skull-sticking kind on first pass, but they're easy enough on the ears to keep you listening, and crafty enough to burrow their way in after prolonged exposure.

Army Navy's note-perfect mining of the classics isn't merely musical. Frontman Justin Kennedy's woebegone lyrics about the one who got away-- who, it comes out in fits and spurts throughout The Last Place, may've been a celebrity, and may not've exactly been unattached-- hew almost as closely to classic power-pop tropes. Melodically, the homage-heavy style works wonders. Kennedy's tunes don't just hark back to Bandwagonesque or Frosting on the Beater; they could proudly stand beside them. Kennedy's words, a balance of imagistic detail, self-reflection, and a sort of standard-issue pop yearning, aren't always quite as successful. Juicy as Kennedy's ruminations on his soured romance can be ("Maybe it's your celebrity/ That makes you want it slum it with me"; "There she goes/ Goddamnit, he knows"), when he drops the narrative conceit, at times his pining feels a bit shopworn.

"I know that I'm right/ But I don't want to fight for you," Kennedy moans at one point in "Wonderland to Waterloo". For every big reveal on The Last Place, there's a line or two of textbook hurt-speak like that one. There's a good reason for this occasional aversion to detail; Kennedy is, after all, still attempting to conceal the identity of his ex-love even while reliving their downfall, and since he's recalling feelings and events concurrently, the whole thing's bound to get a bit tangled. A close study of The Last Place does prove reasonably revealing as to Kennedy's post-breakup headspace, gradually moving from just before the split to the estrangement to something like acceptance; more than that, though, the pain of it all is plain as day in his voice. But those looking for some sort of indie-TMZ from The Last Place are bound for a letdown; no names are named, Kennedy looks inward more often than outward, and any dirt being dished can't sully Army Navy's meticulous music. True, a bit more of the sordid stuff would've lent these tunes a bit more of an edge. But The Last Place is long enough on melodic details, it can afford to play the lyrical kind a little closer to the chest.

Back to home