Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards – Shakes

Dan Michaelson’s deep, resonant baritone smacks you in the face from the very first piano plink: “Could you ever love again? Could you ever let it happen?” The effect is so arresting, so stirring, that it takes you a full minute to reorient yourself to whatever you were doing before. Then again, if you’re taking in Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards in the first place, I’ll assume you weren’t really doing anything but capturing the musical moment.

Michaelson’s music, for the uninformed, plays like Matt Berninger (The National) fronting Vic Chesnutt’s musical heaviness. Chesnutt passed last Christmas of his own volition, following through on a suicidal tendency after chronicling the longing over several albums. Shakes, Michaelson’s second solo long player after years in Absentee, doesn’t occupy the same lyrical territory, but it does ride upon the same grey clouds.

Album opener ‘All The Trying’ is actually an invitation of sorts, but it plays its hand deceptively, haunting with its heavy instrumentation as Michaelson sings, “Could you open up your arms / Just a little / Enough to let the light trickle where it trickles / ‘cause I warned you, I want you.” The follow-up, ‘If Not For You,’ bears the same intensity as the former and reminds of a Frames ballad with a heart-turning refrain of “If not for you / What am I for?”

After a debut album, Saltwater, that included several special guests and complex arrangements, Michaelson described his vision for Shakes as a simplistic, organic one. Despite such techniques, however, the rich soil sits deep with a layered complexity for those willing to mine for it. My guess is that 37 minutes of Michaelson’s mood will be a bit much for most listeners in one sitting, but Shakes marries a tragic feel with hopeful lyrics to create a deeply moving composition.