A deeply personal album, Ben Crum’s Memphis Record hits the spot.
The band Great Lakes was formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1996 with members Ben Crum, Dan Donahue, and Jamey Huggins, and from there, the numbers grew, with a revolving cast of musicians from the local scene involved, until, by 2008, Crum was left as the only permanent member.
The Elephant Six Collective plays a part in the early days of Great Lakes; the Elephant Six Collective being a number of bands all connected to four friends in Ruston, Louisiana, who shared a love for music and exchanged homemade cassette recordings, the friends went on to form bands such as The Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Olivia Tremor Control. Originally part of the Elephant Six Collective’s Athens-based second‑wave, connected through the people involved, early Great Lakes recordings and live performances made use of some musicians connected with the Elephant Six Collective.
Fear of the Fear is the 9th album by Great Lakes; Crum says “I think of it as my Memphis Record, since the bulk of it was written and recorded there“, the record was made with a number of Crum’s longstanding collaborators, drummer Kevin Shea, vocalist Suzanne Nienaber and multi-instrumentalists David Gould and Petter Folkedal along with some local Memphis musicians. It features 12 tunes from the pen of Crum. The current output is certainly different to that of the band’s early years; the psychedelic rock leanings of those formative years giving way to Americana, particularly over the past few record releases.
The major themes running through Fear of the Fear, this deeply personal LP for Crum, are loss and mourning, particularly after the loss of his close friend Ryan Trammel, with Crum saying, “Several of the album’s songs are about a good friend of mine who drank himself to death when his wife left him.” Six of the 12 tracks on the record are about Trammel.
Crum also suggests that “The smallest, simplest, and maybe catchiest songs are at the beginning, and then the songs cycle through in such a way that they get longer and thematically heavier as the record goes on.” So, with that in mind, as the record’s opener, Oh, Your Broken Mind, which simply zips along, it should be the simplest and catchiest. It comes with a word of warning from Crum, as he claims that listening to this song in the car “Makes me want to speed.” So, just bear that in mind if you’re out driving and this song starts to play. Song for Gerard Love recalls the resignation of Love from Teenage Fanclub, when Love did not want to undertake a planned 2019 tour to Japan, Australia and New Zealand, but the rest of the band did. At the time, Love described the situation thus: “a disagreement that turned into a dispute that turned into a stand-off that turned into a solution that suited neither party.”
Alone has a psychedelic edge to it, which Crum likens to early Roxy Music, with Eno experimenting with synth sounds, “playing the knobs“, as Crum succinctly puts it. Again, the song is about Trammel, who died of “drink, loneliness, disillusionment, and abandonment.” It left Crum pondering the respective boundaries of suicide and addiction and where one crosses into the other. The Darkest Blue There Is is a standout cut of the record, featuring strong melody and a persistent, earworm of a guitar line running through much of the song.
Different Air is more of a rock song, more uptempo than most on the record, with another catchy guitar line. The subject relates to having itchy feet, wanting to relocate: “We should be breathing different air.” While Side Two of Tattoo You (isn’t that such a great song title?) is described as a love song for Crum’s wife, and the title fits the bill really well, as Tattoo You is an album by The Rolling Stones that is very much split down the middle; side one being rock ‘n’ roll (Start Me Up, Hang Fire, Little T&A) whereas side two features ballads (Tops, Heaven, Waiting on a Friend). The song has a definite Stones feel to it. The record closes with Letting Go, which is what Trammel was doing after his wife left him, but his friends didn’t realise this until it was too late. As the final lyric goes, “You were letting go, Well I’m sorry, I should have known.”
It’s so often the case that bad (or tragic) situations result in a really good, or sometimes great, record. That’s the case here. Crum has channelled his emotion into some powerful songs, displaying great songwriting, both lyrically and melodically, and this, allied to slick arrangements, makes it possible to pull back the layers and perhaps find something you didn’t expect.