Sean Lennon has said in interviews that the title of his new album, Friendly Fire, is a reference to when people on the same team, or people in love, hurt or betray each other. His characterization of the mood of the record is spot-on. The songs here - many of which practically overwhelm the listener with lush melodies, playful acoustic and electric guitar conversations, soothing strings, and of course Sean’s nasal, almost acidic vocals - are not exactly “happy” tunes, but they’re hardly sad either. Calling the record “bittersweet” would be apropos if it weren’t such a cliché term.

It’s music that would make you feel good about a break-up. It’s also music that would make you feel good about not breaking up. Such contradictions notwithstanding, in the end Friendly Fire is simply a collection of some awfully beautiful compositions. And they really are happy, albeit in a somewhat blissfully tragic way.

Not bad for someone who probably could have put any piece of shit he wanted together and still gotten away with it.

On that point it’s worth noting that this is Sean Lennon we’re talking about. Sean Lennon as in the child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. But all you Beatles-haters out there, don’t hold that against him! If you can’t stand the late Beatle it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll hate his son; by the same token if you’re a John Lennon fan it doesn’t guarantee you’ll fall head-over-heels in love with Sean. The two merely fall under the same branch of the great musical tree known as “pop-rock.” Or maybe it’s “baroque-rock.” Either way, it’s a fairly over-generalized classification of music, as unwieldy as comparing, say, Arlo to Woody Guthrie. (That actually might be a bad example. Both are pretty much the same.)

If Sean must be compared to anybody, Elliot Smith and Rufus Wainwright might be good contenders, but so might his dad or mom. We already decided to basically disregard them however, so let’s move on.

The album opens with Dead Meat, a poignant little ditty that invites you in with chimes and a delicate syncopated pattern on piano. It’s haunting and a little cutesy at the same time. But by the time Sean lets out his oh-so-alluring mwaa waa singing, backed by a soft beat on the drums and acoustic guitar, the heartache wrapped around the vocals could almost be called “emo” if it wasn’t so damn good.

The chorus of the song, “You’re gonna get what you deserve in the end,” actually comes out sounding sad, but it also makes you feel hopeful and inspired. Are we sensing a pattern here?

This is an album of almost-sappy contradictions. The key word there being almost.

On On Again Off Again, a curious little number in the second half of the album that almost sounds like a cracked out Randy Newman song on a teen movie soundtrack, Sean practically whines, “If I can’t hold you somebody will / I never told you I never will.” It’s a sentiment that cycles throughout the song and the entirety of the album, and by the end of it you can’t tell if he’s being serious or if it’s all just one bizarre joke.

One of the album’s real standout tracks though is Would I Be the One, a song Sean admits is an homage/cover of a song Marc Bolan of T. Rex penned many years ago. No matter. The song soars with strings, dreamy effects-laden guitars, and overdubbed vocals that sound accessible and far away at the same time. It soars. On that note, so does the track Spectacle, another one of the record’s gems.

If you can come to terms with hard-to-ignore fact that Sean’s voice sounds very much like that of a mellowed out Michael Jackson, this record can do wonders for your outlook on life. But if it puts you in a slightly sour or anxious mood, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Actually a mellowed out Michael Jackson sounds pretty cool. Maybe it’s just what the music world needs.

Release date: 03/10/06
Artist website: www.seanonolennon.com
Label: Parlophone (U.K.), Capitol Records (U.S.)

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