Album Review: Cracker - Greenland (2006)
In listening to the lyrics of “Ain’t Gonna Suck Itself” (the only original track on Cracker’s 2003 covers album Countrysides), it’s clear that after 2002’s Forever, the band was dropped and effectively screwed over by Virgin Records, the major label they had been with since their debut a decade prior. At that point, the band could have gone in several directions. First, it could fold; second, it could retaliate immediately with an angry and mediocre album; third, it could find a solution, so they found a solution… Actually, in all seriousness they took the long but high road, effectively cooling off for a period of years while the bitterness lost its sting. This is a precarious path, as it runs the risk of the audience forgetting the band, but for a band like Cracker, any fans that remained at this point would prolly remain forever (pun semi intended even though this is about a different album). Still, after three long years in the wilderness, Cracker re-emerged in 2006 with what is undoubtedly their most ambitious and mature work to date; enter the Greenland.
For a band that spent most of their career churning out records that relied heavily on alcohol and irony (and not to mention tongues planted firmly in cheeks), it’s ironic in itself that they should find sincerity with their career lying bloody and unconscious on a bar room floor. But listening to the opening shuffle of the surprisingly poignant “Something You Ain’t Got” reveals a sort of melancholy that permeates the album. The album doesn’t rock, but instead marches to a sort of funeral procession, one indicative of Cracker’s post-2000 misfortunes. Absent are the usual punk-folk blitzes; gone are the pleasantly drunken ballads; barely to be found are the mid-tempo cruisers. Instead we have an ironically sobering collage of indie-psychedelic songs that swirl, drone, and combust. Johnny Hickman’s iconic blues lead guitar is practically untraceable, replaced here with layered organs and dissonance, which is almost blasphemous. While the band certainly started expanding its musical horizons with Forever, Greenland feels like a conscious commitment to change, not an inconsistent spattering of half-assed stylistic flirtations. It’s the first Cracker album of its kind, and quite possibly the last. For a band that cut most of its albums from the same cloth, this is an atypical surprise right out of left field. Indeed, the only thing truly Cracker about it are the obtuse lyrics of David Lowery, but even here they seem to have more weight and less humor. This all being said, however, Greenland is an excellent Cracker album.
Anomalous even outside of the Cracker universe is the fact that the album is amazingly dense and ambitious for a freshmen indie release. But it works so well; the songs flow together in a way previously inconceivable for a Cracker release. It’s the closest the band has come to a concept album, and while it’s essentially a self-serving concept, songs like “Where Have Those Days Gone” and “I Need Better Friends” sparkle with a self-awareness through a wake mentality. The darker epics, “Sidi Ifni” and “Minotaur” feel like journeys through Hades, while “Better Times Are Coming Our Way” trudges like a post-apocalyptic chant. Only on the other side of this sonic abyss does the Cracker we know and love seem to make an appearance. With the Cracker current events update “Everybody Gets One For Free” and the album closer “Darling We’re Out Of Time,” said band seems to come out of the haze, albeit a little older and wiser.
In the end, it’s difficult to know what to make of Greenland. It’s definitely one of the band’s best albums, maybe even their best; but it’s so different that comparing it to their standard classics (i.e. Cracker (1992) and Kerosene Hat (1993)) seems erroneous. Also, given the fact that the band has since returned to its musical roots with Sunrise in the Land of Milk And Honey (2009), Greenland feels more and more like a wondrous fluke that logically shouldn’t be the work of Cracker. Whatever pains the band has gone through; this is a testament to their resolve and survivalism. With that, it’s prolly just safer to leave it at this: Cracker took a long hard cold trip to Greenland, and then they came back.
4/5
"I know that our last record / Didn’t do very well / But now we’re back on the block / With our freedom rock"
McS
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