Michelle Anthony - Stand Fall Repeat

Genre pop Publisher Burn and Shiver External Links Official Site Burn and Shiver

Stand Fall Repeat is about half a great album. Singer and songwriter Michelle Anthony has obviously learned from people like Wilco, Chilton and the Beatles, and she has a big, unpretentious voice. The earnestness of some of this drags me, however. "Don't Deny" is a terrific song, one of those seemingly simple, offhand things that in a better world would be a big hit. There's a real musical sophistication at work here--"Don't Deny" never quite does the expected, even though it's built from standard materials. And "All This Time" and "Radio Waves" are nearly as good.

What's interesting about Stand Fall Repeat is that Anthony seems to have written a lot of these songs on piano--she's a musical conservative with real harmonic finesse. These songs are lightweight without being insubstantial, and just as one could learn a good deal about how pop music is constructed by mastering the songs on an album like Tapestry, Odessey and Oracle or Radio City, one could pick up quite a few tricks from figuring out how Anthony achieves her effects here.

But the mildness of the more conventional rock tunes found later on in the album--even given the line about "the rock and roll family tree" in "Family Tree"--betray a certain lack of invention. They're good, they betray the influence of Matthew Sweet, maybe, but they're a bit samey. I would have tried to make the songs a bit more ornate, a little trickier; I would have tried to make every song as beguiling as "Don't Deny," which sports a real middle-eight like they don't hardly write any more. There's not a bad song here; still, the kind of mastery of pop conventions she displays at her best is something pretty rare these days. I want more great super-pop music. Plenty of people can write the kind of not-quite-rocking tunes that dominate the second half of this album.

It's a very well-played record, and some of it reminds me of post-pub-rock of the kind Nick Lowe did back in the late '70s. Which is a huge compliment in my book, even though Anthony lacks Lowe's pawky humor. Although she does get off a good line here and there: "Your '70s jacket never fit so tight" is nice, and in the same tune, "Analog Feeling," she does mention eight-tracks. Anyway, I quite enjoy this, and I do find "Don't Deny" mildly addictive, I do not deny it. I can only hope Michelle Anthony, good Midwesterner that she is (born in the suburbs of Kansas City and currently resident in Milwaukee) does some old-fashioned Charlie-Parker-style woodshedding with nothing but her '70s jacket and her piano and comes up with a whole album as good as the first four tracks here. Let me up out of here, I have to hear that song again.