Jason Lytle - Dept. of Disappearance (2012)

1) Dept. of Disappearance; 2) Matterhorn; 2) Young Saints; 4) Hangtown; 5) Get Up and Go; 6) Last Problem of the Alps; 7) Willow Wand Willow Wand; 8) Somewhere There’s Someone; 9) Chopin Drives Truck to the Dump; 10) Your Final Setting Sun; 11) Gimme Click Gimme Grid

More pleasantly familiar if completely predictable Lytle territory, with a few obvious standouts.

Key tracks: "Dept. of Disappearance", "Matterhorn", "Your Final Setting Sun"

 Jason Lytle’s first post-Grandaddy solo album - Yours Truly, the Commuter - came with a comforting sense of familiarity. It may not have been thoroughly excellent but it was very undeniably Lytle, proving that even if Grandaddy were gone he was still releasing music with the same magic intact, which is obviously a great thing. Dept. of Disappearance, his second solo release, also comes with a sense of familiarity. This time there’s no alarms, no surprises - just a feeling we’ve actually heard this all before. Just one album ago, actually.

Dept. of Disappearance could just as well be titled Yours Truly, the Commuter 2. The differences between the two albums are largely superficial: Lytle still plays all the instruments but he’s produced them to sound more like a live band this time rather than the decidedly homespun, one-man-show feel of his solo debut. The overall musical gist, however, has remained the same. Lytle plays his wistful indie rock as he longs for something vaguely nostalgic and scatters melancholy melodies all over his pretty little ditties. It’s Grandaddy with the edges off, with any fuzzier guitars and rougher moments replaced by more synth strings and piano-lead navel-gazing. Dept. of Disappearance even has a simple borderline-novelty sing-along moment in form of “Get Up and Go”, just like Commuter had “It’s the Weekend”. Dept of Disappearance comes across a lot like a neat copy/paste job that’s been brushed up a little.

The good thing about finding your angle and sticking with it is that if you’re good, you’re always going to produce pleasing results and that’s what Lytle has done here too. Dept. of Disappearance is in every way an enjoyable, competent album that’s going to please anyone who’s ever enjoyed Lytle’s works before and which is a good album to dig out a few times a year and lose yourself a little into. But it’s also the first time Lytle hasn’t had anything new to say that would make it stand out from the rest of his releases, and while enjoyable the songs generally aren’t doing anything special either. Few are stronger than others, like the sunset ballad “Matterhorn” and the anxious, hurried “Your Final Setting Sun”, but most of the album’s contents were already found on the last album and it was much more exciting and interesting the first time around. The title track that opens the album is by and far its best offering, starting out with a strong hook and self-assured tone that’s miles away from the general wistfulness of the album, and getting even better once it switches to its extended instrumental outro that’s restrainedly epic.

It’s only at the very end and the closer “Gimme Click Gimme Grid” where Dept. of Disappearance snaps out of its own comfort zone: the skipping rhythm of its drum machine, the dissonantly different verses and choruses and the extended length of the song all shaking things around. It’s hardly anything new or experimental but it’s a nice inspirational spark, sadly at the very of the album though. While on one hand I’m glad there’s another album’s worth of more Lytle material out there, mostly it feels like Lytle’s cruising on a comfortably pleasant autopilot for a good length of the album. That the Grandaddy reunion announcement happened shortly after the album’s release speaks for itself. There’s a great EP hiding between the covers here but for the most part Dept. of Disappearance is Lytle writing music while his heart has already been set on bringing together the old band.  

Rating: 6/10