The challenge in writing about the music of Versus is that if you're a long-time fan of this band, you're liable to let yourself get carried away with praise. I think given the fact that they've been away for nine years, a reader can understand if someone like me just raves about the group's newest release, Ex Voto, out on Friday via Ernest Jenning Record Co.. But, admittedly, no matter what one writes, the music of this four-piece still has that unique knack for evading adequate description. The tunes, as all the best Versus songs did in the past, slip through one's fingers as soon as they seem to reveal their obvious hooks, only to offer up on subsequent listens more secrets. Can you tell that I love this album?
"Gravity", featured in another version on the band's return EP from earlier this year, here is fleshed out by the players so that a listener realizes we are back in familiar territory. And as good as that one is, it's "Moon Palace" that positively shines here in the first half of Ex Voto. With all the players of the group -- Richard Baluyut, Fontaine Toups, James Baluyut, and Edward Baluyut -- kicking into high gear, special praise is still to be laid at the feet of Fontaine Toups here, as her vocal interplay with Richard Baluyut is sublime. And as she sings about having "forgotten my former life", one hears an echo of the sort of lyrics New Order frequently used, lyrics that highlighted the brilliance of the mundane, or something like that. The synergy this group always had, whatever the line-up behind Richard and Fontaine, is still evident, and a number like "Mummified" churns and burns with the kind of energy that made this band one of the best live acts all throughout the boom years of American alt-pop.
The second half of Ex Voto kicks off with the percolating hooks of "Baby Green", a cut that doesn't sound too dissimilar from something like "My Adidas" from Hurrah nearly 20 years ago. And while that number and "Atmosphere" have a lot of that quiet/loud-kind of thing happening, the sort of release of coiled tension that many of the best Versus songs had way back when, it's the final two cuts here on Ex Voto that offer up a few subtle surprises. "Nothing But U" seems more obviously beautiful than one might expect from this band of stealthy power -- play this one for your friends who are new to the group -- while closer "Re-Animator" punches with a lot of force in its extended coda. It is, like so many of the best Versus songs, one that thrills in the same way that the best Superchunk songs thrill.
Like the tunes from those peers and sometime label-mates, those of Versus still seem timeless things, compositions that seem so simple but which unfurl for a listener like a selection from a jazz record. And us fans are just junkies for this kind of thing, waiting for the moment when the pieces click into place, and the players lock into a groove, and we can hear something faintly transcendent happening, or being attempted. There were never that many pieces to a Versus composition, but somehow the band could put them together in a way that resulted in music being created that felt routinely magical. I gush but I'm glad these musicians are back, and so glad I'm able to write a rave review of this album before it drops on Friday.
Ex Voto by Versus is out on Friday via Ernest Jenning Record Co..
More details on Versus via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Dan Efram]