Rating: NNNN
The latest entry in John Darnielle’s Alpha concept discs, which track the foibles of an imaginary (and terribly dysfunctional) couple, Tallahassee is a brutally powerful novel in song. Driven by shuffling acoustic guitars, Darnielle’s insistent, occasionally whiny vocals climb gentle hills of melody, anchored by well-chosen ambient accents of harmonica, xylophone, piano and organ. While the tunes are brittle, strikingly varied and consistently good (the shimmering Idylls Of The King is an indie rock knockout), it’s the dude’s way with words that really hits you where it hurts. Darnielle is a genius with metaphor, reinventing tired “love is a battlefield” sentiments in a way that prevents this remarkably restrained disc from ever becoming background noise.
