Review: Buck Meek, Two Saviors
Two Saviors, Keeled Scales
It’s fitting that “Pareidolia” is the opening song on Two Saviors, the second solo album by Big Thief guitarist, backup singer, and co-founder Buck Meek. Pareidolia is a term to describe our ability as humans to see things that aren’t really there; a face in the pattern of a wood table or a panther creeping by in a passing cloud. Like cloud watching, the characters and memories within Two Saviors fall in and out of focus, quickly morphing or evaporating before we get the chance to grasp their meanings. In an interview with Glide Magazine, Meek said that songs on the album, like “Second Sight,” were intentionally ambiguous: “I was trying to touch on working for humankind, working for the collective. Working on a labor of love for all kinds I suppose.” It’s a lofty goal, but it’s one that plays out across Two Saviors, whether it’s a dazed recollection — ”Two tons of turtle doves from out of state” — or a posi-platitude that should be trite but isn’t: “Yes, I work for free / 'Cause love is all I need.”
Time has a way of fogging up the past, and on Two Saviors, Meek relishes in the mist of memory like a kid drawing a heart on a dewy windshield. “Candle” has Meek forgetting the eye color of an old friend or lover to the lull of a slide-guitar: “Did your eyes change? / I remember them blue / Or were they always hazel?” “Cannonball Pt. 2” would feel nostalgic, but its barroom piano chords and light guitar fuzz evoke celebration rather than yearning.
From John Prine to Conway Twitty, honky-tonk has a long history of making cowboys weep, and Meek’s heartfelt voice could have easily been used as a vehicle for woe. His singing rides that sweet spot between full voice and falsetto, occasionally cracking perfectly like a Hank William’s song. But Two Saviors is not a sad record. Instead of reveling in tropes like heartache and pain, Meek’s version of country music is dreamy and casually funny. Over the eerie plucking of a guitar, Meek asks his Big Thief cohort and ex-wife, Adrianne Lenker, for a sandwich: “Please spare my life with ham on white tonight,” he sings before launching into one of the album’s true rock moments. The song is silly and deeply personal, like an inside joke that can only be shared between long-time friends.
Clocking in at 36 minutes in length, Two Saviors is over before you know it. But its dense lyrics and mysterious themes make you want to go back and hunt for Easter eggs. You’ll find some for sure, though it’s uncertain if you’re actually solving the puzzle or merely projecting meaning onto a bunch of disconnected parts. Is there a universal message behind Two Saviors? Or is it a stream-of-consciousness cipher that only Meek has the key to? Either way, it’s kind of a moot point; we’re just cloud watching anyway, right?
Listen to Two Saviors on Bandcamp below: