Less Ready to Go

Still a collaborative effort, and even more bustling than 2018s Michael Nau & the Mighty Thread in terms of arrangements, Less Ready to Go is Michael Naus fourth album under his own name. Recorded at a studio in Joshua Tree, it was produced by Dr. Dogs Scott McMicken. As for its particularly colorful sound, Nau has explained that each song was recorded live with guests, who would then switch instruments and do a live overdub on top. Alongside extra touches and sound effects, the results are often wonky and woozy on an album whose otherworldly quality extends to reaching back to the 60 and 70s for R&B, pop, and psychedelic influences. Rather than ever playing like a tribute, these elements seep into Naus dreamy songs. The opening bent notes of warbling first track Hoops transport listeners to the studio turntables of AM radio, with its laid-back groove suggesting an old-school Sunday drive. Self-reflexive lyrics like Getting used to getting used to the beat/I think about you in every major key precede a melodic guitar-and-keyboard jam that closes the song. Vintage soul also inflects the up-tempo Maybe Just Dont, which adds interjecting brass and more-active percussion to its dancing bass line, melodic guitar, and twinkling organ. With recording techniques and processing suggesting movement as much as dream states, the idea of altered states suffuses tracks like Fade Shade and the distorted reggae of Looking Into Dance. The albums ballads and love songs (2 Powers, Be Smiling When You Can) arent exempt from the alluringly strange qualities of Less Ready to Go, which also represents one of the former Cotton Jones and Page France leaders strongest sets of underlying songs. ~ Marcy Donelson