Listening to Love As Laughter’s new album, Laughter’s Fifth, is like sitting on a couch in the corner of the basement where the recording took place. Amplifiers hum, the vocals wobble a bit from time to time, and YOU are there. As Mr. Love As Laughter himself, Sam Jayne, says, “It was all done so hobby-style, like we were weekend warriors”. There’s not much in the way of pretence here, just four guys in a basement making a record. It’s an amiable affair, loose, rumpled and a little rough around the edges, but definitely inviting. C’mon in, grab a beer and have a seat.
As you might guess from the title, it’s album number five for the band, and their third on Sub Pop. (First two were on K Records.) This time out, the band consists of Brandon Angle manning the bass, Zeke Howard on the drummer’s throne, and keyboards via Miguel Mendez. Since Jayne handles vox and guitar duties, and it’s his gig, you hear a lot more of him than the others, but really it’s more of an organic unit. Think Crazy Horse and you won’t be too far off. (Disc opener “In Amber” especially lends itself to that theory, as does the slightly more sedate “Survivors”.) Let’s put it this way: some of the warm groove from their cover of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s “I Won’t Hurt You” sorta slops over onto the rest of the record. It’s not psychedelic per se, but if you were to somehow travel back to, say, 1971 and play the tape for the people you ran into, I don’t think it would sound too entirely alien to most of them.
As much as I love the “slam it out fast, leave ya lying in a ditch somewhere bleeding from the ears” approach to rock & roll, there’s lots to be said for a more relaxed approach, too. My two favorite tunes here are slow builders. “Every Midnight Song” goes from spare bass and keyboard figures to full band rave-up (and back down again to voice and bass) in just under five minutes. “Pulsar Radio”, starts out with forlorn organ over, er, a drum machine. Fear not. They work together to suggest the long lonely drift through the interstellar void, setting up a late-night background for Jayne’s cosmic ruminations. The effect is trippily hypnotic without resorting to cheesy techno-burble, aside from the aforementioned drum machine.
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