testface, doctor won't you get us to dawn
review by pattyjoe

Who is this Brother Testface, imploring a Medicine Man for a
respite? The album's protagonist is a _voice_, a human voice wavering
quite unsentimentally between fear, banality, and sometimes even
belief.
Calling on the Doctor, David Snider ask for a reprieve that he (and
most of us) know better than to expect. His album is a kind of
testimony or paying witness. Despite the interrogative title, Testface
asks nobody for anything much. I'm not even sure that Snider is
reaching out for any kind of audience, but I don't think he minds
being overheard.
Each of the album's myriad strengths echo the depth and singularity
of Snider's very personal vision. The alarmingly capable Testface
Band, for example, supplements Snider's words and themes with
remarkable restraint, and in so doing, defies the excesses of your
usual indie rock big band. Every keyboard stroke, laptop blip and
Telecaster strum serves to color in and elaborate upon Snider's
compositions; in particular, drummer Derek Trost deserves high praise
for providing a lesson in how to play only what the songs demand.
Additionally, the meticulous production efforts of Snider, Jake and
George lend the album all the weird austerity and oddness of your
strangest neighbor's strangest yard sculpture. This "place for
everything, everything in its place" quality resonates with Snider's
aesthetic. He understands that we each deserve our own personal
Xanadu, and leads by example.
Ironically, I fear that this laudible instrumental and engineering
effort may elicit kneejerk evocations of names like Smog from lazier
listeners. Of course, such comparisons can be taken as high praise in
and of themselves. But they suggest to me that the record's musical
formalism - however unique and productive its juxtaposition with
Snider's voice - may put off or underwhelm the occasional scenester
cop or industry goon. Obviously this is only a worry if one is
interested in preaching to or kissing on a certain gaudy choir. But I
too sporadically wonder how these songs might sound a bit undressed,
and driven, as they were written, by the solitary strumming Snider.
Maybe some other time? Maybe not. One takes what one gets, ultimately;
to me, this album is about that.
In keeping with my belief that, for all of its accomplishments,
_Doctor Won't You Get us to Dawn_ is anchored by Snider's voice and
words, Richard Buckner seems like the only vague correlate to Snider's
sound. Like Snider, Buckner's words evoke a galxy of lives and
experiences without ever succumbing to the painting of a naturalistic,
narrative picture. Snider's songs attain the impossible atmosphere of
an OVERHEARD SERMON, demanding attention and empathy without asking
for either. If you've lived long enough in this very murky world, I'd
wager that you have come to cherish the offhand, accidental voices of
you meet (or never meet) in passing. I maintain that the combined
effect of such half-told stories and ambiguous acts buttress life and
art in ways that not even loved ones can.
I invite you to take this Testface album as such a chance
encounter, and to eavesdrop greedily. You'll hear of a doomed and
lusty king, as well as the momentarily longing for an auto wreck.
You'll also hear, in "Hold On Merry Go Round," of Brother Testface
sitting by a loved one's sickbed, wishing for his brother. Will the
brother return, if only in memories? We don't know, because Snider's
more interested in the longing than its resolution. Such is this
album's claim to full-on writerly greatness. Should you lose it, only
to recover it after four years, 6,000 miles, 80 hysterical hangovers
and what feels like five lives lived, you will nevertheless receive it
and cherish it as a prodigal son. You will play it again, and know
some part of you has been humming it your entire life. "Hello
Stranger," you will say.