On “Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling”, Slaughter Beach, Dog start on the outside of something and doesn’t really try to get inside The first single—and the album’s second track—“Strange Weather,” sets up this seeking early. “How am I still unsure?” Ewald questions, across an upbeat arrangement laced with rounds of percussion and scratchy, quietly moody guitar instrumentation reminiscent of Abbey Road-era Beatles.
Jake Ewald formed Slaughter Beach, Dog in 2015 as a means of fighting writer’s block while writing songs for his main band at the time, Modern Baseball, and the project – now featuring his former Modern Baseball bandmate Ian Farmer on bass, Adam Meisterhans on guitar, Logan Roth on keyboard, and Zack Robbins on drums – has since released four LPs as well as multiple EPs and live albums. At the beginning of the pandemic, Ewald relocated from his longtime home of Philadelphia to a house in the Poconos, filling his time with long walks, surrounded by nature, and listening to classic songwriters like Neil Young, Randy Newman, and Tom Waits.
There’s a sense of drifting across the album, a soft indie-rock escapade through city streets, small towns and diners. The songs are full of Americana imagery and richly detailed scenes vivid enough to take in—and taking them in feels incredibly easy when the music has such a gliding, soaring quality. “Engine” is one of the clearest examples—an easygoing but troubled odyssey through the desert, the woods, bars and a family reunion—as it boasts such an even-keeled rhythm of soft taps and drum beats, so much so that you might not even notice that it’s nearly nine minutes long.
For an album with such a relaxed, shade-dappled feel, the lyrics make up something almost surprisingly restless. On “Strange Weather,” it’s “I don’t wanna think about you anymore”; on “Summer Windows,” it’s “I wish that I could tell you what I’m thinking about.” But, by “Easter,” this searching resolves into something that does indeed feel like death—or, at the very least, a dream. Guided along by steady guitar strums and lullaby-gentle vocals, the divine finds its way into Americana here, in a trombone, in an offering of potluck casserole, on a black sand beach. There’s no attempt to communicate through words on “Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling”, so nothing can fall short.
Across these songs, love is something felt through someone’s presence next to you: reading a sign, their hand on a drink next to your own. That’s what these lovers and characters are maybe feeling, and that’s the wordlessness these songs offer
The Fat Angel Sings 