This is the second straight review of an album released in 2020, but it is very different from the heavy metal bombast that is Eternal Champion. Let us instead turn our attention the softer joys of indie folk-pop.
Disc 1507 is…. Point the Flashlight and Walk
Artist: Told Slant
Year of Release: 2020
What’s up with the Cover? Two frightened girls are out for a walk in the dark. They look they could have used the album’s titular flashlight, but instead have chosen to go with a bucket of rags and a book. Not sure how they plan to read in the dark (again, without that flashlight) but neither item is going to protect them from anything lurking out there in the night. Usually I’d go with vampires, but these kids look pretty rural so instead I’m going to assume they later die at the hands…of a werewolf!
Well, the teeth and the claws of a werewolf. He won’t have hands until he’s turned back into Mr. Bradshaw, the local baker, who later will help organize the search for the missing sisters.
Then again, on the album’s inside fold there is second painting, this time with the girls down at a lakeshore about to push a boat out with a man’s corpse in it. So maybe the girls got the better of Mr. Bradshaw’s werewolf. When he turned back into a person, they realized no one would believe them and decided to dispose of the body.
How I Came To Know It: I read a review of the album (I think on Pitchfork) and decided to try them out. Then I had my record store order it in for me - shop local!
How It Stacks Up: This is my only Told Slant album, so it can’t really stack up.
Ratings: 4 stars
Told Slant is one of those “bands” that is actually just one person – in this case singer-songwriter Felix Walworth. Walworth also plays all the instruments although, we must assume, not at the same time.
Walworth sounds like a folksier version of Will Sheff (lead singer of Okkervil River), possessing the same slight warble. He is quieter than Sheff but has that that same “almost out of tune” quality that generates additional layers of uncertainty on songs that have a lot of doubt and apprehensiveness to begin with.
Wrapped around this folk quality, Walworth adds a “sad anthem” ambience that would feel at home on a John Hughes movie. These are songs for staring wistfully out at bleak existence – potentially while sitting alone in the high school cafeteria, or from high in the bleachers at the homecoming dance.
There is a lot of angst on this record, and at times it gets so overwrought you want to shout, “get over it!” at Walworth’s characters. However, more often I just fell into that pleasant wallow created when sad music is done well.
It helps that Walworth avoids the common danger of the detached indie voice and sings with honesty and vulnerability. He helps his cause with some delightful guitar picking. These serve as the songs’ hook, pulling you into a reverie. He plays a lot of different instruments (organ, bass, various percussion) but it is the guitar that’s the star of the show.
The record also has a gift for a turn of phrase, and while these songs are often more mood pieces than stories, you get the feeling of real characters inhabiting them. The anxiety of the opening track, “Meet You in the City”:
“Gotta take a pill just to meet you in the city
If it's too heavy can you carry it with me?
Beauty is a heart that you want to stay beating
Ugly is the sun coming up for no reason”
Or the hard conversations that can take you through to dawn on “Moon and Sea”:
“We can talk until the birds are waking
Up with the sun, another day the earth has taken
And learn about the things that only moonlight can draw out
That set the page on fire when you try to write them down.”
The album cover plus these images confirms Told Slant is not keen on daytime.
That’s just as well, because these songs work better as hymns or prayers whispered in the dark. The record doesn’t answer those prayers, and you’re left with the impression that his characters’ poetic expressions of doubt are left hanging in the night air, unresolved. It sounds like it could be unpleasant, but it is a strangely cathartic experience.
I started out wanting to poke fun at all the angst on “Point the Flashlight and Walk” but instead Told Slant won me over, leaving me with appreciation for his songwriting talent, and a restful heart from what he had to say.
Best tracks: Meet You in the City, Bullfrog Choirs, Run Around the Schools, Family Still, No Backpack, Moon and Sea
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