Although the accusation “sophomore slump” is often unfair, and never truly describes what’s happening in a less energetic second album, it does point to a curiously consistent phenomenon. I’m hesitant to apply it to the Invisible Cities’ second album, Houses Shine Like Teeth, but if I do, maybe it’ll help illuminate some of the dynamics in this messy, charged, and puzzling collection.
Their first, Watertown, was straightforward: each song a compact burst of mood and melody; the whole exemplifying the band’s considerable range. It was the perfect first album: it sounded like the band sounds, it advocated for your interest in them, it was exactly what you want in hand when trying to woo new audiences.
Houses comes five years later, so it’s not suffering from the lack of time that causes weak second albums; yet it still feels like a random collection somewhat hurried together. The most accessible songs, falling in the first half of the 15 tracks, still demonstrate Han and Sadie’s songwriting chops in their confident melodies and changes. But the import of each is somehow muddied: emotion and mood aren’t clearly communicated; quirky and confusing lyrics tease, but don’t help. Somehow, the music obscures, rather than explicates, its own sound.
But I don’t think they’ve given themselves enough rope to hang themselves with, either (the other sophomore slump rationalization). The songs are tightly produced, and there’s little self-indulgence here. Instead, the muddiness seems churned up by the conceptualization of the songs themselves. The artists seem to want to push their basic song structure farther than the typical song wants to be pushed. Yet this yields as much ambiguity as complexity.
They appear to recognize this in the second half, where the tracks depart somewhat from traditional structure and abandon strict accessibility. Starting with “Oh Drone” — a friendly, Velvet Undergroundish nod-off without the heroin — the pieces start playing with feedback, repetition, wall-of-sound effects, or combinations. But again, not enough rope: only one of these “experiments” breaches the five-minute mark, and they all keep a retaining wall. Nothing is overwhelmed by floods of anything.
