Before moving to Seattle six years ago, BOAT's David Crane was a schoolteacher in Chicago. Apparently he didn't enjoy his former line of work, but it must have flipped some sort of switch. If the many narratives that have populated his pop songs are to be believed, he was very much in his element: Comics. Video games. Dinosaurs. Baseball cards. Homework. Trying to make sense of girls. Since morphing a basement solo project into a celebrated live band, Crane's songs have gone back in time in search of parallels. Setting the Paces, BOAT's third LP, ups the production values but dives even deeper down that wormhole.
As Pitchfork's Marc Hogan nailed during a track review of single "Lately" a while back, the guitar dressings here fall "between Pavement slack and Tullycraft twee." (NERD BONUS: iTunes conveniently spits out "Post-Twee" when filing Setting the Paces' genre tag.) That means BOAT's music keeps pace with Crane's quirks, and the sounds and themes dovetail. But while the filament that lines and lights most of these songs is certainly "twee" by nature, this is a rock record. That comes through in the aforementioned hike in fidelity. Guitars are brighter than before, shout-a-long choruses meaty enough to bite. The handclaps sound great, too.
"Lately" is a clear highlight and perfect example. Palm-muted tick-tocking gives way to a full-blast power chord workout and on to a chuggable chorus. Crane even does a great Stephen Malkmus impression (check the way he croaks "my teeth won't have to chatt-ah"), though the smirking here is more playful than devilish. At the center of it all is one gooey, delicious hook. And thankfully, these elements come together often through Setting the Paces' 40-minute, 14-track entirety. From the "Victoria"-mined verve of "Prince of Tacoma" to the quiet beauty of "100 Calorie Man", no stretch is skip-over territory. Every song is irrepressible in its own right.
But something about it all rings empty: though the sonics definitely take it to the house, Crane struggles to connect. Lyrically, we're zigzagged back and forth through a few decades of young man's blues, subjected to silly rhyme schemes, nachos with mom, and dancing centipedes. To coat things with humor is very much Crane's game and while it makes for a real party in a live setting, the dork schtick on record serves only to obscure how strong these songs are. In fact, Setting the Paces' most resonant moments happen when Crane sits still long enough to go deeper, to pull back a few layers. It's not until the sore-throated coda of "We Want It! We Want It!" that he seems to focus long and hard on some tension in need of release. A heartbreaker, "You're Muscular" closes the record on a note equally naked. Crane's melody keeps pace with his poetry and not the other way around.
