Pistol Star: Crawl

admin on Jan 3rd 2005

Paul Kimble is, quite possibly, one of my favourite producer. Best known for his work as a member of Shiva Burlesque and Grant Lee Buffalo (plus production credits on Luna’s “Days of Our Nights” and the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack), it was with great interest that I sought out a copy of the multi-instrumentalist’s long overdue solo album.

“Crawl” begins with the glistening string arrangement of “Mr. DJ,” a tune tied down with the heavy piano sound that one would associate with Grant Lee Buffalo; the track’s Sunday-morning pop is then met with a slightly strained falsetto rap from Kimble (who performs, sings, writes, mixes, and produces a large amount of the album just by himself) before settling into a more catchy (and comfortable) chorus. “Shine,” meanwhile, follows the opener with another pop-fuelled falsetto tune, this time giving you the unmistakable impression that there are more than a few layers at play beneath the track’s surface.

The title song itself is sublime: lovely, lonesome, but content in the face of things; it’s arguably worth getting the album for this track alone. Here, Kimble’s voice is refreshingly strong behind just an acoustic, the warmth and strength of the message having no delay in reaching the listener. The ghost of George Harrison even makes an appearance for the lead-guitar solo (again played by Kimble himself) for a fitting end (it is of the same calibre as a latter-day Beatles number) to a remarkable song.

If it wasn’t for the steady drumbeat at the beginning of “Fool,” the soundscape of this song could sound quite spooky. Despite an interesting guitar sound (and a Tom Morello-like spit of a solo), Kimble’s voice again feels like it’s sitting too high, made even more apparent when the line “feel like I’m a fool” gives us a hint of what his natural singing voice sounds like, before the song bubbles into a backward-sounding drone to close out. Similarly, the underwhelming “Halo” feels like it’s missing something – lyrically, it just doesn’t connect with the kind of punches that Kimble’s sound is capable of.

The misty “I Don’t Feel That Way” starts off with the pairing of a lovely double-bass and a subtle-string arrangement, hammering into a slow, pensive daydream in a smoke-filled, darkened room. It is precisely this gift for production that would have me eager to hear any project with Kimble’s attached. The sun-drenched, drifting sound of “Candy” is another upbeat excursion into fancy-free pop; the melody of the chorus guaranteeing to find its way into your head days later, infectiously burrowing its way deep into your subconscious. The bulging sound of “Lovely Lolita,” on the other hand, featuring a characteristic Paul Kimble bass-line, is illustrative of the overall kind of feel that Kimble seems to be trying to capture on this album: light-hearted, yet often sultry, pop. The overall style of Kimble’s sound, however, when paired with a half-spoken falsetto, is one that manages to sounds not too far away from certain Faith No More tracks in the process.

Lyrically, the weight and substance of “Crawl” is missed on songs such as “It’s OK” – a tune which gives you the feeling that, by the time it reaches its dipping “Hallelujah,” the heart of this song had the potential to be something greater, but was never quite realised. The rolling “We Never Close” sees the return of Kimble’s bulging sound with a slightly more-sinister take on the previously mentioned sun-drenched pop — a template that has been forged out with mixed results thus far. Rocking from side to side, a melody that could belong to a sedate Frank Zappa is sung with a slight sense of urgency before leading us to the album’s tender final track: “I Know.”

There’s something strangely familiar, yet hard to place, about this final outing: strengthened with a female harmony, Kimble gives the listener another flash of the kind of quality he’s capable of in sombre fashion with a Neil Young & Crazy Horse-esque tune, before finally bowing out. Overall, having literally waited years to hear this album, perhaps a sense of disappointment was always inevitable given the rather high-standards Kimble’s past work had already firmly established in my mind; or perhaps it is because the feel of this album is decidedly more mainstream and, indeed, a genre apart from those same said works. Regardless, it is clear that, although Kimble has asserted an impressive amount of control to oversee this project, Pistol Star could use the aid of another lyricist (or melody-maker, at least) to work in tandem with its main contributor, if it is to attain the same heights that Paul Kimble is no doubt capable of achieving.