13. Dream Syndicate, The Days of Wine and Roses (1982)

[2006 review here]

It took me a little while to appreciate the squalls of this album again. My first time playing it recently made me wonder what I ever saw in it, but I was too focused then on the songs I never liked very much. For one thing, this was always more of a one-sided album—I mean, the title song is fine, with excellent shots of wailing feedback on the solo, and the vocal showcase for bass player Kendra Smith on “Too Little, Too Late” is good stuff too. But “Tell Me When It’s Over,” “That’s What You Always Say,” and of course “Halloween” were the main places I lived on The Days of Wine and Roses, sufficient unto the day. “Tell Me When It’s Over” hits with a bang and nags with a wheedling guitar figure, bearing an ominous mood of doom that almost instantly sets the day in shades of grayscale. Steve Wynn’s vocal sounds like it was recorded by Flesh Eater Chris D. to emphasize the aping of Lou Reed. The drums pound it up like fanfare for the turns and transitions, achieving shambolic glory. Already the album sounds exhausted by all experience, reporting in from some other-dimensional afterlife. Those not inclined to skipping songs may then sit through “Definitely Clean”—the drummer doesn’t seem to know what to do here and the tune’s little journeys up and down the scale are not much inspired. Never mind. “That’s What You Always Say” starts up next, once again entangling us in this exquisite gnawing mood of doom, grinding and insinuating into brain recesses. Chief songwriter, singer, and guitar player Wynn—enamored of feedback fillips that swirl all over the album like bats around the head in a cave—is not that much (at least here) on the electric guitar as anything other than a blunt instrument. But he knows where the guitar solos belong and that can be half the battle in these 2 guitars bass drums configurations. “Always Say” opens up a dark road. Traveling it is irresistible. “Then She Remembers” follows with some good fast loud energy and then it’s on to the main attraction, “Halloween.” Everyone involved seems to know perfectly well what they have with this one, a certain majesty of straightforward attack and rolling fierce flattening force. It’s so big, this final apotheosis of the doomed spirit on The Days of Wine and Roses, that they chose to fade it in, raising it up from wherever it came, let it cajole and roar for six minutes, and faded it out again, as if the beast had to be approached carefully from all sides. It’s perfect for Halloween too—not because there’s anything particularly ooky-spooky about it, but because it knows winter is coming. Play loud—there’s a possibility I will be saying this a lot from here on.