Dan Bern
Breathe

(Messenger)

First Appeared in The Music Box, September 2006, Volume 13, #9

Written by John Metzger

It’s not like Dan Bern to craft an album that feels half-baked, but his latest endeavor Breathe never coalesces in quite the same manner as his other recent gems Fleeting Days and New American Language. Though the outing begins and ends in a promising fashion, its middle section not only suffers from a lack of urgency, but it also loses sight of Bern’s narrative thread. Tongue-Tied, for example, never succeeds in transcending its appropriations from John Lennon’s Real Love, and the Elvis Costello-ish Rain sounds like little more than infectious filler. Granted, throughout his career, Bern’s music always has been his weakness, and although he is capable of concocting sturdy melodic refrains, they frequently don’t do anything other than to echo the work of Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello, two artists with whom he shares a less-than-desirable singing voice. Typically, though, he’s turned his deficiencies into strengths by carefully dismantling the arrangements of his influences’ material and using the parts to support his own sharply worded, stream of consciousness lyrics. Not surprisingly, all four of Breathe’s highlights — Trudy, Past Belief, Feel Like a Man, and the title track — serve as prime examples of his capacity as a songwriter. On each, Bern is unapologetic about taking what he needs from Dylan’s repertoire, and within the compositions, he effectively skewers the corrosive nature of western society’s materialistic culture, even as he searches for something that is more meaningful to satisfy the emptiness in his soul. If the rest of Breathe was as poignant and focused, it might have stood as Bern’s finest effort to date. Instead, its awkward execution significantly tempers the forward momentum of Breathe’s early moments, making it a frustratingly uneven excursion that vacillates between being wholly essential and pleasantly irrelevant.

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Ratings

1 Star:   Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!

Copyright © 2006 The Music Box