After joining Grizzly Bear, touring with them, and then recording what would become their “break-through” album Yellow House, Daniel Rossen’s former band Department of Eagles seemed to be sliding by the wayside after a failed recording session that became known as the “January Sessions.” Little hope remained amongst the two members. That hope, according to Nicolaus, was the song “Balmy Night,” a song that was recorded at the end of the “January Sessions” and eventually showed up on their second release In Ear Park. “Balmy Night” stuck as a constant reminder that the ideas, talent, and resources were there for them to keep the dream of a fully realized DOE record alive. This delicately structured time in the band’s history is on display in the release of the accumulation of the material surrounding and filling the “January Sessions,” now titled Archive 2003-2006.
Although Archive is a rough collection of material pulled together in album form, it somehow coalesces into a whole easier then one would expect. Sloppy and disjointed moments are left to arrange themselves in the outskirts of the albums free-form, experimental “Practice Room Sketch” pieces. These pieces allow for this collection to properly represent the birthing of DOE’s stylistic change towards thoughtful, endearing, and beautiful song structures with equally poignant vocal accompaniments. All of the pieces are of shorter time lengths and feel like a more folksy Will Cullen Hart experiment, like his “Green Typewriter” suites on Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle or his “Black Foliage Animation” collages on Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One. These pieces are an experiment, a fleshing out of budding ideas and creativity; they represent the process and growth of their evolving sound, and they are the perfect compliment to the fully realized songs that make up the rest of the album.
Fred Nicolaus stated that Daniel seemed to be striving for a “sophisticated, dark Americana” in his “Practice Room Sketch” pieces, and that realization comes to fruition within the remaining, full-fledged songs. There is a dark and somewhat creepy feeling that lingers around the skeletal structures of these songs; wispy and formless presences accompany the songs as they stretch and retract, as they inhale and exhale. I can’t help thinking that this is the music that should’ve been playing in the bar scenes of The Shining. A dusty, old-timey, distorted slice of a haunted American past reverberates, pervades, and prevails, echoing through time. “While We’re Young,” “Flip,” and the Elliott Smith-y “Brightest Minds” are the more upbeat, dance-like songs that chug along like a possessed locomotive, or a terrorized train, while “Deadly Disclosure,” “Grand Army Plaza,” and the beautiful “Golden Apple” sift and flowingly expatiate into the hazy, darkened, surrounding atmosphere. This collection of material grows beyond it’s preconceived restrictive notions and develops into a harmoniously structured album that flows in a linear progression as opposed to a disjointed and choppy mixture of loose ends.
