Alan Sparhawk is at once wildly prolific and stringently efficient. While on break from his sludgy day job as the lead singer of Low, Sparhawk sets up shop as Retribution Gospel Choir, a poppier, rockier outfit that bends to his erratic whims. The band’s second album, 2, consists of 10 tracks, two of which are under a minute and two of which are over five. The songs transition from “Workin’ Hard,” which has ’70s hit written all over it (picture Boston doing a Journey cover) to “Poor Man’s Daughter,” a five-minute-plus tripped-out desert stomper. Things don’t straighten out from there. “Something’s Going to Break” is a noisy throwaway with a Spinal Tap-funny final 40 seconds, “Electric Guitar” is a beautiful if somewhat meandering opus and closer “Bless Us All” perfectly concludes the album’s passionate, unfinished feel.
2 sounds like an experiment, and an interesting one at that. Even still, it’s only truly captivating on first listen, and each subsequent listen is exponentially less exciting. Sparhawk is always worth listening to, but this one might fall out of rotation at the expense of some of his other work.
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