We live in America, where all sorts of miscreants and rapscallions run free. Religious mountebanks walk unchallenged on the streets of our major cities; newspaper editors are unlicensed and in some cases allowed to raise children; and it’s possible for publicists, many lawyers, and Paula Abdul to go through life and never be gifted with a pie in the face.
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So cut Trip Shakespeare some slack. Yes, the Minneapolis foursome are moonchildren, and moonchildren on a level rock and roll hasn’t seen since Donovan got his first whiff of patchouli, but with so many other cultural criminals on the loose, why pick on them? Trip Shakespeare is three guys and a girl who traffic in an unapologetically 60s form of art pop (Pet Sounds meets Fairport Convention, with the Association on vocals) and promulgate a capital-R Romantic worldview spiced with a daisy-chain, prepunk optimism (Donovan meets Paul McCartney, with Up With People providing the political analysis). And their vocal attack–the three guys–may be said to be unsubtle. But Trip Shakespeare has a couple of unlikely heroes: a guitarist named Matt Wilson so unabashedly lyrical that his guitar lines stay in your head long after you ask them, politely, to leave. And a drummer named Elaine Harris who keeps forgetting that she’s not in Talking Heads. Plus there’s John Munson, a bassist whose operatic singing gets out of control at times but who’s kind of likable anyway; and guitarist and keyboardist Dan Wilson, Matt’s older brother, who adds to the whole operation what little sense and maturity it has.
With Dan, the group recorded Are You Shakespearienced?, the first example of the band’s precipitous growth: melodically it’s occasionally arresting–there are nice riffs and hooks on “Toolmaster” and “Two Wheeler, Four Wheeler” and a pretty bridge on “Spirit.” But the production was about 20 years out of time, and the younger Wilson’s lyrical concerns were beginning to get worrisome–they seemed to be fast developing into an almost painful olio of Renaissance Faire flourishes, portentous apostrophes, and low-budget Keatsianisms (“Swing! She ring rattles in a randy way”).
And about that name–Trip Shakespeare? Wilson struggles for words. “Our band,” he says gravely, “we want to be great. Even if we never are. Anyone can judge us”–here he glances at his interviewer, whom he has already taken to task for calling the group’s second album “dopey and overwrought” in print–“and it’s not too hard to see that we’re not great yet. But that’s what we want to try to be: world-ending, timeless, great. And to have the name of a genius hang over your head all the time, it reminds us. Reminds us that the point isn’t to get up some stupid chart. The point is to make something that’s beautiful.”
