Crisp and remote, the music contained within Only as the Day Is Long, Carissa's Wierd and Band of Horses contributer Sera Cahoone's second album, is pitch perfect. The pedal steel underscores melodies, the acoustic guitars are bright and the vocals are both sad and beautiful. Many of these songs belong on the newer Singer/Songwriter-y New Country radio stations popping up around the south, or on the cable radio as well. I don't have cable radio or Sirius, but i'm gonna take a wild guess & say that station is called "Americana." With a few songs that could be repeat players on said stations, and the impeccable recording, the question to be asked is: Is it any good?
As a singer/songwriter, Cahoone doesn't have much to say and...doesn't have much to say. Case in point, "You're Not Broken," the channeling of "I Figured You Out," the Elliott Smith song most know from singer/songwriter Mary Lou Lord's version. In this song, in the rich E. Smith tradition of writing dark and slightly cruel character profiles, Cahoone lashes out by singing "Time's been movin way too fast for you, you feel like you're seventeen...but the way you look, it's no seventeen." Whoa, SNAP! No She DIDN'T! In other songs, instrumental breakdowns linger, without any real melodic draw to move the song along or to break it down (i.e., don't expect Nels Cline to accidentally walk through any of these songs...or even Jay Bennett). Also, as a singer/songwriter, Cahoone drops off a couple of stinkers that sound like they belong on the CD they hand out when entering the City of Austin, Texas, including "Baker Lake," which unfortunately shares a tempo, chord progression, strumming pattern and melody with a song I could never hear again, the awful "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls.
The singer/songwriter-y radio songs, though, are note perfect. While taking it's sweet time to get there, when Cahoone belts out the beautifully harmonized "Liiightning strikes me only in waves" on "Only as the Day Is Long," it's a fairly triumphant and definitely sing-a-long-able moment. And the slide guitar walking into the standout track, "Happy When I'm Gone," signals the signature moment on Only as the Day Is Long, when all the elements come together that make the record both pretty and a textbook example of an album of it's type. The slide guitar aches, the banjo drives the melody, Cahoone's sleepy, sorrowful voice lamenting "I'm already over my head," and there's a moment of harmonic resonance that differentiates her from the Sarah McLauchlins of the world. Too bad these moments are so few and far between.
