Coventry — Our Lady of Perpetual Health (Septic Jukebox)
Our Lady Of Perpetual Health by Coventry
Coventry is a Chicago-based jangly folk-pop duo, made up of Mike Fox and Jon Massey. Both principals have been in bands before, Massey in Silo’s Choice, Animal Mother and Upstairs and Fox in Arthhur and Flesh of the Stars, but neither has made much of a splash. With so many bands vying for attention, you might wonder how their charming debut, Our Lady of Perpetual Health, entered our critical field of view. The answer is simple: they asked.
Of course, it’s not really that clear-cut. Lots of bands ask for a spin. Few get our collective ears, and fewer still become the subject of reviews. Not to be too full of ourselves. We all understand how insignificant Dusted is in the greater scheme of things, but we still get a fuck ton of promos.
Success depends a lot on when you ask, which is hard to time. You want to show up in the inbox when the writer isn’t completely buried, burnt out and this close to never reviewing another record. That’s hard to time, but deep summer is as good a guess as any. It also depends on how good you are. Here, the bar is high but not insurmountable. We all like finding something wonderful, especially if no one else is listening.
So about the record: it is damned good.
Let’s start with the sunny sting of “Chain Wallet,” with its bubbly lilt and bittersweet haze of nostalgia, its slippery little guitar riff that cascades over a series of notes like the self-effacing protagonist of this song clearing his throat. Here I am. Love me. But no, he’s stopped up the toilet and broken the girl’s bathroom scale, and all the jaunty, indie rock jangle, all the tight harmonies are likely not much use. It’s an imperfect world, nice guys lose all the time, so why not make a song about it? There’s that riff again in scat format: diddle-diddle-doo, diddle-diddle-doo.
“Seneca” is even more endearing, with its hard-strummed guitars and soft, near-falsetto choruses, its gleeful hooks and rueful lyrics. “I see you bobbing on the ocean/I see your hand above the waves,” they croon giddily, and whether they’re seeing a swimmer or a drowner, it’s hard to say.
I do not love the soft, white boy funk of “Ottawa,” which puts me in mind of the Spin Doctors, and I think, overall, the best stuff comes in the album’s first half. However, the piano and organ-laced “Sprouts” has the rueful 1970s pop resonance of Eric Carmen, the stylized articulate drama of certain Destroyer songs.
Indeed, Our Lady of Perpetual Health seems like the sort of sunny but shadowed, catchy guitar pop album that used to arrive more regularly in our post boxes and email accounts. But maybe they have been and just got lost there? Very possible. Glad to have caught this one.
