Thao and the Get Down Stay Down – Know Better Learn Faster

The Attractions. The E-Street Band. And… the Get Down Stay Down? Alright, so the latter ensemble may not pack the same kind of rock and roll muscle or classicist clout of the first two, but on Know Better Learn Faster, their second outing as the back-up band for singer/songwriter Thao Nguyen, they sidestep such concerns altogether and give a convincing audition for the part of the next great supporting crew. They do everything a great supporting cast should do; They stay on their toes, nimbly and effortlessly following their maestro from one scene to the next, never stepping into her spotlight but occasionally stealing the spotlight all the same.

And that’s not even the coolest trick they pull off here. Even more impressive: They take us on a slapdash tour of indie rock, circa 2009, and remind us just how versatile and wonderfully weird the scene can be at its very best.

The record starts with a red herring: “The Clap” is a rustic, handclapped sing-along that sounds piped in from a cozy mountain cabin shared with Fleet Foxes. But Know Better isn’t just another indied-up spin on The Band; when we get to the second song, “Cool Yourself,” we’re suddenly listening to a greasy-spoon bar band, complete with E-Street horns, and if the guitars are less pronounced than on a Hold Steady record, it still sounds like these guys have visited some of the same dives as Craig Finn.

And so it goes. “When We Swam” picks up on indie rock’s current infatuation with R&B, though it’s showier and more gregarious than anything The XX has recorded. The title song is a wistful ballad that sounds lifted from a dream, thanks in no small measure to some graceful whistling and fiddling from—yep—Andrew Bird. “The Give” starts with a banjo and seems to return us to Fleet Foxes territory, but its gothic story-song narrative makes it feel closer in spirit to The Decemberists.

If there’s any strain here, it’s been smoothed out by producer Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Laura Veirs), who wraps this record in a warm, rich darkness, elegant but deeply expressive. And if there’s any sense of showing off, of trying to be all (indie) things to all (indie) people… well, no, these guys are too professional for that. And besides, we haven’t even gotten to Thao. She’s a singer too compelling, with a vision too particular, for this to become an exercise in empty genre-hopping. There may be a plethora of styles on display here, but they merely reflect the variety of emotions, all tied to a greater, larger story.

And that story is a sad one. This is a break-up album, and it begins as ominously as any in recent memory; “The Clap” is not only a false start, but also a warning, with Thao and her crew wailing, “If this is what you wanted, okay! Okay!” She’s not pulling punches: Know Better is sexy, elegant, and sometimes elegiac, but it’s also righteously pissed off. The title is an admission of a lost cause, an uphill battle — you can’t know better until it’s too late.

Thao flits between emotions as readily as her band does styles. “Body” may be the album’s darkest moment, a clanging rocker that speaks to sexual indignation and separation pains (“What am I, just a body in your bed?”), while “Oh No,” the most evocatively quiet and haunted thing here, casually (and wrenchingly) segues from accusation to admission of guilt (“I meant to come home to you/… I never said what I meant”).

Emotionally speaking, Thao’s songs are complex, but available; they’re mature, never artificial, and poetic even when their language is simple and everyday. They’re sometimes contradictory. In other words, they’re human. And that’s what makes this more than the work of a scenester—something that will last longer than the trends it may happen to reflect.

Related posts:

1. Thao With The Get Down Stay Down- Bag of Hammers

Tagged as: Indie Rock, New York City

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