Moving through my collection as I’m doing,
it’s a joyous occasion when I come across artists
I love from the end of the alphabet who are
collaborating with artists from an earlier
letter of the alphabet (David Byrne and
St. Vincent, Robyn Hitchcock and Andy
Partridge from XTC) or when I arrive at
a solo artist or a new band from the beginning
of the alphabet who I’ll listen to again when I get to
the band they used to play in way back when
(Crowded House, Neil Finn, Split Enz). On this
occasion, I’ve already taken a deep dive into
the albums of The Dear Hunter, and today I arrive
at Casey Crescenzo’s solo-side project called
Honorary Astronaut. Stylistically, it’s not a huge
departure from The Dear Hunter–smart lyrics,
great vocal melodies, terrific and sophisticated
instrumentation, and a big sound. Unlike your
typical album by The Dear Hunter, there is no
unifying concept here, but rather, a tiny but
mighty selection of five individual songs,
and on these recordings, it appears that Casey
has played all the instruments except keys
on two songs and a guitar solo on another.
So, even though The Dear Hunter is a kind
of solo project, but performed as a full band,
this Honorary Astronaut stuff is maybe what
Crescenzo does left completely to his own devices.
It rocks in places but overall it’s more chill, more
pop-oriented. It feels kind of like a lost ELO album.
“Love! Or, the Beast That Looks Like It”
is almost a soft rock number, borderline yacht. And
the E.P. closes with the slow, melancholy of the
project’s theme song, “Honorary Astronaut,” a song
about the common human foible of setting our
sights perhaps a little higher than we can fly.
“I’m an honorary astronaut. I’ll do the best with
what I’ve got.” There’s the struggle to come to
terms with our limitations fighting against
our optimism or wishful thinking about the
kind of person we hoped we could be. We don’t
give up that vision, must make adjustments
accordingly, become the honorary version.
Better than nothing. This record, though, was
a welcome respite during that awful COVID era.
Not a Dear Hunter album, but way, way better
than nothing.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Honorary Astronaut, Cave and Canary Goods, 2020, white vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 