Cairns - Alt-Country / Indie Rock - Missoula, MT
by Jordan Finn
Cairns’ Spotify description is a refreshingly brief and spot-on summation: “Dystopia is here and more abstract than the books said it would be. We want to help make music to cope with that. No Guitars. Missoula, MT.” The cover art of their newest record called The Saturn Return sets the tone for what the album has in store. It’s a view from a ski lift in the off-season, free of both people and snow, a scene of the familiar that’s just not quite right. Regardless of whether the image suggests climate change or a depopulated and post-apocalyptic planet, it’s a clever and fitting introduction to a record that’s as thoughtful, grounded, and other-wordly as its imagery alludes. Just like the absence of guitars in their bio, the usual tropes of indie rock are pared back here, creating a wholly unique experience resistant to the stuffy and conservative side of the genre - greater than the sum of its splendid parts.
Led by Missoula transplant by way of Georgia, Ryan Carr leads song-writing duties and enlists Jenni Long on the trumpet, Rob Cave on bass, and Brian Tremper on drums and keys to make one of the most realized Montana records I’ve heard in a while. Self-described as blugaze, Cairns hops between influences as varied as dream pop to post-punk, alt-country to jangle pop with results that aren’t cluttered and busy but lovingly balanced. Each track finds room for effects-heavy mandolin, frenetic drums, and brightly-played trumpet alongside Carr’s octave-spanning vocals and astronomically-themed lyrics.
Like their brief bio and the “Space Station” single that anticipated The Saturn Return, the record takes the idea of examining Earth from a celestial perspective. Bookended by the two tracks “Spaceman’s Landing” and “Spaceman’s Return” the work at large feels like a poetic examination of not only our damaged planet but what it means to grow up. For those less astrologically-inclined, the Saturn return of the album’s title refers to the point in one’s life where the ringed gas giant completes a full revolution around the sun, roughly twenty-nine years and about the same age as Carr. If anything, it’s a metaphor for unequivocally reaching adulthood, a time to face reality. And what a reality to face.
Song for song, The Saturn Return makes a case for a unique kind of indie rock, albeit, one where the drums are bashed and bass licks fly with a familiar abandon but where trumpet plays a bigger role than any guitar and mandolins are absolutely drenched in reverb. Carr’s dedication to the mandolin colors the entire album’s sound and with that as his starting point, compels the other instruments to creatively adapt to his unorthodox approach. Plugging what’s perceived as either a stuffy classical instrument or an armament of the bluegrass hillbilly into an amplifier is a surefire way to tell your audience they’re in for something special, sui generis. And while much of the time you’ll probably forget that what you’re hearing isn’t someone strumming away at a Telecaster but one of his Eastwood mandolins, the moments you do notice have you rethink what you’ve already experienced, that things might not be what they seem. In applicable ways, this is essentially what the album sets out to do both conceptually and sonically.
Among the album’s highlights are its singles but also its first full song, “Laugh Track.” It helps introduce the poetic sensibility Carr foregrounds from front to back, with lyrics that are subtly political (“Came to terms with feeling dispossessed / New apartments ruin that sunset”) but replete with the witty phrasing that’s veritably Dylanesque: “Oh take the abstract attach a canned laugh track / Check the playback needle in a backpack oh / We’re in a flashback singing with the soundtrack oh.” The album hums with this kind of wordplay, including on the single “Earthbound,” opening with lyrics comparing meteorological “depressions” and “raised pressure” with emotional states of mind. It hops along to jangly chords reminiscent of early R.E.M. and has Carr leaning more into his occasionally Matt Berninger inflected-vocals. It’s a joyous and free-spirited tune grounded by his low-register singing and astrologically-intrigued lyrics. I especially appreciate the minimalist touch of an Arturia synth with each chorus that gives the track that special spacey something of the truly extraterrestrial.
But where Cairns shines the brightest is when it embraces the darkness, shutting the curtains and lighting the candelabra for some downright sinister vibes. On “The Wellspring & The Fever Tree” (this listener’s personal favorite) the band leans into that all too familiar darkness, sounding like a Southern gothic seance or a stormy prophecy set to music, complete with harmonica. Carr really hits his vocal sweet spot on the number with his smooth baritone, and the arrangement as a whole is fabulous. Between verses, we’re treated to a foreboding instrumental section where the established fear is given room to simmer before transitioning into a bluesy harmonica solo - all while electric mandolin tastefully riffs away. You can practically see the haunting outlines of spectres on the walls of some swampy manor’s abandoned rooms. The cymbal builds complemented by Jenni’s backing vocals make this midpoint on the record a true high point.
That’s not to say Cairns only hits its stride when the tone is benighted. The punky “Villains” at first sounds like a post-punk “Walk, Don’t Run” cover with a playful horn line on each chorus. “Space Station” strides jauntily along to sustained organ notes and Carr’s frightening imagery that the end is clearly nigh. It’s as close to a religious moment on the record. The song is largely inspired by Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? with Dick’s polluted and overpopulated setting quickly becoming all too real. With apocalyptic thoughts like these, it’s obvious why Carr and co. perform this track with the most spirited intensity on the entire album.
Admittedly, parts of The Saturn Return feel less compelling, scratching the same itches as the other tracks with some sections running on a bit long or with backing instruments buried so far in the mix to be nearly inaudible. The lack of a clear bass on “Heaven” is either because it’s quietly substituted by another instrument or just mixed into being straight-up subaudible. Which is a shame because the bass playing (as always for Cave) is slick as hell. Major props to Cave’s versatility who lends a lot of texture to each track he appears on.
Thematically, the album tackles two diametrically opposing desires - a wish of launching ourselves space-bound and escaping our cursed planet, but to also float back down to our own roles and responsibilities and keeping things livable down here. Both desires are present in lines like “I hit my head if I get too high,” on “Laugh Track” and on “Ego” where Carr sings, “But eventually all the perspective will pass / Realism, Take hold of my core / And the glory will fade, the perspective will change.” It’s clear that Cairns struggles like all of us with striking that fine balance between escapism and the present tense.
And if there’s a key message to The Saturn Return it’s about keeping a thirst for wonder alive as things keep descending into deeper vaults of subterranean darkness. It’s important to note that as the Spaceman of the album’s opening and closing “lands” and then “returns,” it’s as if their planetary visitation coupled with the performance of the album suggests the Spaceman (or even Carr) is bringing us the music we hear on the record, as bringing us damned earthlings this alien transmission of celestial hope. Artistry is an essential way we cope with reality, fusing the opposing paradigms of reality and dream through the thoughtfulness of artistic expression. Ultimately, it’s the album’s last lines that cement a longing to live a world of dreamy explorations of the cosmos having done the work of “landing” and registering the reality of our fucked-up planet, Carr crooning, “I’m sick of these suburbanites / Let’s live our lives like bandits / Find ourselves in distant places / and bounce between the planets.”
True to their promise, Cairns blazes a trail out of modern existence’s fatalism and provides an album’s worth of poetic comfort. The fact that Carr is now thirty-one means the Saturn return of the album is not only a theoretical device but a personal reality to be navigated, a stake that explains Carr’s forceful bravado and sharpened craft. We learn to live with the way things have tragically turned out to be and see how our earthly humanity is as much of a true path to the stars as any billionaire’s rocketship. If space represents the ultimate escape to a future of cosmic harmony, then it’s reminders like Cairns’ that show us we can still do that right here, together.
