Arron Dean - MPLS

Arron Dean
MPLS
Self-​Released; 2010

Guest Con­trib­u­tor: Jenn Broad­well

Migra­tion from one cold pop­u­lated city to the next pro­duced an entirely new Arron Dean. The tough jour­ney from punk in New York City to indie folk in Min­neapo­lis allowed Dean to cre­ate some debut-​worthy solo mate­r­ial. MPLS is wrought in the image of Minnesota’s twin cities, save for the first track, which ref­er­ences a neigh­bor­ing state. Like the com­pan­ion to an old west­ern film’s open­ing cred­its, “Buf­falo, South Dakota” sul­lenly sets the record in motion. Per­haps as an apol­ogy to pre­vi­ous med­dling, Dean exag­ger­ates a plea for for­give­ness by say­ing, “If I saw you in Buf­falo, South Dakota, I wouldn’t won­der why you’re there. I wouldn’t care. I’d be glad I got to see you.” As if, in the pecu­liar event that he runs into this cer­tain woman in the scarcely pop­u­lated city of Buf­falo, South Dakota, he could actu­ally avoid ask­ing why she’s there too.

Love, loss, and for­give­ness draw an inter­est­ing par­al­lel to the cities in “Min­neapo­lis.” Love can sur­vive harsh con­di­tions, just as the cities emerge from a cold win­ter. Dean writes about the peo­ple he misses and the peo­ple he loves. Although pay­ing a visit may open old wounds, he encour­ages said indi­vid­u­als to return to him. They are wel­come in his life, despite what has hap­pened in the past — even the unan­nounced and those scarred with scars. With its unplugged intro­duc­tion and duet vocal, “Unan­nounced” is my favorite track.

Any­thing can be said so long as it’s in a song, right? With some­thing akin to the sound of echoes down a drafty hall­way, the raw record­ing of “Happy Hour” begins with the direct state­ment, “I want to make you my wife.” Did she hes­i­tate? Why else would he fol­low it up with “Catch the tail end of happy hour, talk it out.” The rest of the song is full of “I’ll take care of you” and “I’ll love you for­ever” promises.

Each song seems to be a spe­cific shout-​out to some­one dif­fer­ent in Dean’s life. In “Noth­ing Owed,” it takes him just over one minute to tell some­one that he thinks of her daily and he would be lonely with­out that daily thought. As the gui­tar scale cuts abruptly, that’s all she wrote. Don’t get me wrong, he is sin­cere. He sim­ply says his piece and that’s that. “Sleep With­out Me” offers a nice drum roll and a lit­tle jazzy piano. Fur­ther­more, a sub­stan­tial steel gui­tar solo is present in “Empire,” and I think Dean is refer­ring to him­self as that empire, but he is tired and he can­not serve with­out a reverie for­ever. He will not for­get the past, but he must get on with his future. “Thorn in Your Side” diverges from folk into a full-​blown coun­try twang. It brings the album to a nice happy close.

Dean refers to the cities as “a tem­po­rary place, the kind you’ll never leave” as a hint that the orig­i­nal plan was to pass through, but he got stuck. He also seems sad­dened by the com­pany. In his opin­ion, the St. Paul city lights are “wasted on the drunks.” Despite these obser­va­tions, a lot of good came of his time in the cities — a qual­ity debut album is evi­dence of that. An elab­o­rate account of hard­ships and learned lessons is a prod­uct of that. His heart­felt sto­ries pair nicely with his del­i­cate whis­per, sim­i­lar to that of Joshua Radin or Sam Billen. As for the bal­le­rina on the album cover — maybe there’s noth­ing more del­i­cate than a ballerina.