The Nothing Venture

Description

The Nothing Venture is an album by the American rock band Five O’Clock People, released on Pamplin Music in 1999. The album was recorded by Joe Chiccarelli and Chris Fuhrman at Supernatural Sound in Oregon City, Oregon; with Chiccarelli producing. Mixed by Fuhrman at the Sound Kitchen in Franklin, Tennessee.

This northwestern quintet has put together a brilliant introductory album. While new to most of us, Five O’Clock People have been not-so-quietly building a strong regional fan-base. Due to this support, they finally garnered the attention of Pamplin Records.

Stylistically, they fit well into the “coffeehouse” style. Much like Caedmon’s Call, there’s a clever combination of thoughtful lyrics, acoustic instruments, and multiple vocalists. Along the way, there’s a cover of the LSU song «Blame», which turns out better than the original, although in a totally different context than Mike Knott‘s.

Their original music is no slouch either. The first track opens with what sounds like keys on a trash can. The track as a whole sets the tone for the entire album. It has a light touch, full-sounding without being overwrought, and suitably moody lyrics:

The quest for faith is a lunar endeavor
Not warmer and brighter but darker and wetter
I trudge and I slip as I reach out for daylight
But grasp only fistfuls of night
I wonder is doubt the way of faith?

It’s both thoughtful and honest without being overly sappy or too dark to be enlightening. Other standout tracks include «Sorry», «So Far Gone», «Fall Silent», and the interlude and postlude, with their haunting refrain of “Sometimes think of You…”

On the album, there’s touches of accordians, Wurlitzer, B-3, slide guitar, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and the list goes on. The vocal work by all three vocalists, Alex Walker, Drew Grow, Patrick Retreault is quite good, lacking the nasal quality that is often found in folk and coffeehouse singers.

This album is easily as good as Caedmon Call’s most recent effort, if not better, and should receive a lot of attention. [Alex Klages, The Phantom Tollbooth, 1/13/2000]

An advert in the American trade press quoting a chap from a Palm Beach radio station alerted me to this album. “«This Day» is the song that we all hoped Jars would have written and recorded.” And certainly, the opener here, the lilting mid tempo «Lunar» quickly indicates a vocalist, at times, uncannily like Dan Haseltine. But it would be inaccurate to present this team as some bunch of clones hastily signed by corporate America to duplicate the Jars’ phenomenally successful sound. Five O’Clock People stand in a long tradition of thoughtful art rockers whose creatively deft rhythms, poetic imagery and painfully honest lyrics of love and loss strike a note of recognition wherever American students gather. For those prepared to investigate, there’s much to marvel at, like the eerie, synthesizer soundscape of «Glass» or the mandolin and accordion driven roots romp of «Now I Sing» or the breathtakingly sad «Fall Silent» (my nomination for the slowest song of the year). But it’s the strength of their lyric writing which eats into your consciousness, bristling with intriguing metaphors (“Balancing the weight of the state I’m in/ On the head of a pin”), literary allusions (“Precious does that grace appear/ Now Frodo finds the strength to face his fears”) and literally dozens of insights of that paradoxical tension – of following a transcendent God as we grapple with our human frailty. I hope this becomes a huge album Stateside. [Tony Cummings, Cross Rhythms, April 2000]

CD tracklist:

01. Lunar
02. Sorry
03. Blame
04. So Far Gone – Interlude
05. Glass
06. Now I Sing
07. Remain
08. Same Old Line
09. This Day
10. Living Water
11. Fall Silent – Postlude

Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and CD by Pamplin Music.

[youtube_sc url=”0xURrSVQJVs” title=”Five O’Clock People – Blame, live at George Fox University in Newberg Oregon on 2.8.2008″ autohide=”1″ rel=”0″]