If nice guys finish last, then Archie Powell is one gracious loser. On Skip Work, the debut LP from Archie Powell & The Exports, the down-on-his-luck songwriter grinds many of the same small town, every man stones of chest thumping blue collar life while keeping a cheeky wit.
Powell is what I expect most people assumed Rivers Cuomo would become. Powell's power-pop is more developed, more pronounced, yet his demeanor is less boyish. Instead of Kiss and Dungeons and Dragons, he writes about flaky friends and getting the heat shut off. He's an endearing character whose incisive lyrics turn many of the album's flatter moments into touchstones.
""Mattson Is A Flake"" hangs on the same quick hook, but the lyrical allusions to ""The O.C."" and Milwaukee Bucks games add some of the entertainment other instruments would have. ""Piggy Bank Blues"" follows the same underdeveloped keyboard plod onward until Powell drops the punch line that ""Rock 'n' roll is just a pyramid scheme.""
His bread and butter is translating Weezer's charming innocence to the oily grind of Elvis Costello's ""Welcome to the Working Week"" fatalism. On the title track, Powell puts sharp guitar chords on a wagon of self-empowerment that sounds something like Michael Bolton taking a baseball bat to the fax machine in ""Office Space.""
Occasionally, like on the Biggie-Sized ""Fighting Words,"" Archie Powell & The Exports try their hands at a grandiose, arena-sized punch: Keys thrust full and strings blaring wildly. But their most anthemic choruses fall short for the same reason most of these songs do—this is Archie Powell's band, everyone else just plays in it.
""Loose Change"" hangs the guitar's chords to float in the breeze, but the keyboard's attempted waltz kicks it over with two left feet. The bass shows up even less, rarely if ever straying from Powell's root notes or aping harmonies.
It's to Powell's immense credit, then, that Skip Work somehow works. These 12 songs of tidy pop music find the line between wallowing in failure and trumpeting liberation
and sit right on it.
However readily he plays the role of working-man's trumpet with established modes of rock, though the songs on Skip Work that stick out the most are the ones where he seems to borrow the least. ""Down & Out"" ditches talking points and clichés of unemployment and meditates on what happens when growing up means growing out.
His disposition changes entirely on ""The Darndest Things."" He takes solace in a partner and gets a rare helping hand from buoyant keys and a walking bass line.
""All Tuckered Out"" takes a break from employment issues and makes a standout track framed around more precise topics such as ""stealing keyboards from the old church basement,"" and ""arguing about those custom drum heads.""
That's sort of the catch with Skip Work. Powell's rifling on the drags of a day job holds water just fine. His instrumental accompaniment does nothing to demean any of the songs' integrity. Skip Work is an established, full-bodied record, but when Powell drops the speakerphone for more general musings on relationships and anecdotes of friends he taps into something else altogether. Skip Work hits myriad relevant chords for anyone entering the work force in the near future, but when Powell rails on more specific targets of personal experience, I can't help but think: Ok, enough about me; tell me more about you.
