Various Artists: Dark Was the Night
Scott Plagenhoef, Pitchfork, 26 February 2009 [Link]

8.6 // Best New Music

Charity albums all start wonderfully-- with good intentions and noble causes. Alas, they frequently end poorly, entering the world as collections of outtakes, abandoned ideas, and uninspired covers. Whether that matters is another thing: If you share Natalie Portman's interest in the value of microcredit, or any number of executive producers' hope for more Darfur awareness or money for Doctors Without Borders, getting a decent Death Cab song or Afrobeat comp should simply be a bonus "thank you" for your minimal contribution.

For 20 years, the Red Hot Organization has been-- along with War Child, more on them in the upcoming days-- the gold standard for the charity album. Battling HIV and AIDS via pop culture, Red Hot came out of the gate with an eclectic winner, the Cole Porter covers record Red Hot + Blue (1990). Most of our readers are likely more familiar with their 1993 No Alternative disc, which collected tracks from Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Pavement, and others. Two decades later, they follow with Dark Was the Night, a collection of 31 new and exclusive songs from most of the heavy hitters of the NPR-friendly wing of indie music.

Produced by Red Hot, along with the National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner, the vast majority of the songs on this collection are worth owning regardless of where the money is going. The first of the two CDs, in particular, is full of gems. David Byrne and Dirty Projectors keep their vocal affectations on the right side of awesome on "Knotty Pine"; Feist adeptly teams with Death Cab's Ben Gibbard on a cover of Vashti Bunyan's "Train Song" and later slow burns through the outstanding Grizzly Bear collaboration "Service Bell"; and both Yeasayer's nimble "Tightrope" and My Brightest Diamond's smoky version of "Feeling Good" are eyebrow-raising lateral moves.

A few things that looked a bit too on-the-nose on paper turn out to work: Bon Iver, in the process of breaking away from the lazy "guy in a Wisconsin cabin" narrative, delivers a song about... a small town in Wisconsin; the Books, a half-cello, half-electronics duo, and José González, a Nick Drake-like singer-songwriter still best known for his covers, get together to do Nick Drake's "Cello Song"; Kronos Quartet boldly transform Blind Willie Johnson's gut-wrenching, crucifixion-inspired 1927 blues moan "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (the track that gives the comp its name) into a chamber ensemble piece.

Not to be outdone by their invitees, the National shout-out Pavement on the languid "So Far Around the Bend", recalling Pavement doing the same to one of their favorite bands (R.E.M.) on No Alternative. Aaron Dessner pairs with Bon Iver for one of the record's several ghostly tracks, "Big Red Machine", while brother Bryce goes one better, teaming with Antony Hegarty to cover Bob Dylan's take of the traditional ballad "I Was Young When I Left Home". Antony in particular shines, giving it a somber matter-of-fact reading that lends the entire song, not just the purgatory of its final verse, a note of tragedy.

Disc One saves its best for last though: Sufjan Stevens breaks his relative silence with a cover of the Castanets' "You Are the Blood", scrapping his baroque preciousness for tactile avant-pop. Infusing the track with a twitchy, restless quality, Stevens re-imagines the song-- musically as well as lyrically-- as a tussle between the subject and his body, an appropriately haunting quality for this compilation. (Buck 65's remix, "Blood Pt. 2", isn't as successful.) Stevens teams a more cacophonous version of his traditional arsenal of horns and choral vocals with the sort of minimalist electronics he leaned more heavily on in the days before he earned indie-level fame.

Disc Two is more of a mixed bag. Spoon kick it off with a badly needed injection of rhythm; their "Well-Alright" feels like the jaunty bar-bandisms that used to soundtrack National Lampoon films-- think "I'm Alright" or "Holiday Road". Arcade Fire follow with a similar but less-interesting version of the same idea. From there things oscillate between meh and engaging, with quality contributions from the New Pornographers (covering one of their bandmate Dan Bejar's Destroyer songs), Yo La Tengo, Riceboy Sleeps (featuring members of Sigur Rós), and Conor Oberst with Gillian Welch.

Standing out even more positively, My Morning Jacket's laid-back "El Caporal" and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' swivel-hipped Shuggie Otis cover "Inspiration Information" bring warmth to the proceedings; Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch-- one of the few non-North Americans here-- adds lyrics to an old Scottish folk song, and the resulting "Another Saturday" is one more quiet triumph for him in a career full of them. Best in class on this disc, however, goes to TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, whose version of the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You" is like a Stephin Merritt pastiche with horns grafted onto it, but it's glorious because of, rather than despite, its obvious homage.

I confess though: My first reaction to listening to this all the way through was negative. When focusing on what's not here rather than what is, Dark Was the Night comes off as a gray, monotone look at the current indie landscape and, as a result, works best in small batches. It's missing not only rhythm and electronics-- more hip-hop, anything in the DFA axis, M.I.A., Animal Collective, etc.-- but volume and velocity as well. Sure, it's a charity record not a party soundtrack, but No Alternative was full of actual rock songs. On this evidence, today's guitar-based indie is primarily folkie tunefulness, baroque lines in which the guitar is subservient to other instruments, or, based on the original Simon Reynolds definition of the word, post-rock: "Using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords."

Dissecting the reasons for this and determining the consequences, if any, is another matter altogether, but it's a shame that the diversity of previously successful charity comps-- the Red Hot ones mentioned, War Child's The Help Album-- is missing here. Naturally these artists are more popular than their experimental, electronic, and rock brethren-- Gang Gang Dance, Air France, or No Age would sell fewer records than the Decemberists on any day of the week-- but the idea that rock is less central than folk music in underground North American music is not only really weird but a very new phenomenon. Again though, these songs are uniformally excellent, so it's a minor and possibly misplaced quibble. And, who knows, maybe-- hopefully!-- Red Hot is in the process of asking the Hold Steady or Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hot Chip or the Knife, to help craft sequels.