Tim Heidecker : Slipping Away
There are largely two ways to present a classic psilocybin trip in popular culture. On the one hand, you have the idealized version, full of radical contentment, idealized tranquility, tears of joy and happiness. Or you can have the nightmare version, made up of paranoia, hazy neurosis, panicked dread. The trip that actor, director, comedian, and musician Tim Heidecker is on in “Trippin’ (Slippin’)” embraces the former. In it, he is soaking up the sun by the pool, “grinnin’ like a fool,” and generally unperturbed by the loneliness and anxiety life can present in spades. In many ways, this trip seems to encompass much of the first of Slipping Away, Heidecker’s latest record. The livin’ is generally easy, and when it isn’t, well, that’s okay too. It isn’t until the album’s midway point that the worm finally starts to turn, and all that sunniness is replaced by more than a few dark clouds. It’s also, for better or worse, when things get interesting.
Heidecker has always been in a wholly unique position as a songwriter, a big “if” hanging over the whole endeavor. If you are familiar with his work as an absurdist, ironic comedian and actor, you will undoubtedly approach his work as a musician differently than if you have not. He seems to know this and even though he is now a full five records into his work as a genuine, heartfelt solo musician, he still seems to, at times, be fighting against his own self-created persona as a bit of a merry prankster. On the first half of Slipping Away, he deals with this by embracing an almost overwhelming level of sincerity. These are songs about familial love, contentment and acceptance from man very much going with the flow. The music, too, is as sunny as it gets, the classic-rock signifiers and sunny guitar solos awash in a serenity that feels well-worn and comforting.
It can also feel just the least bit hollow. “Dad of the Year” and “Bottom of the 8th” are surely aspirational in their levels of domestic bliss, but as dispatches from an increasingly fascinating artist, they feel like half measures, the beginning of a thought that feels good but never completes itself. Of course, it’s only after hearing what the second half of Slipping Away has in store that you come to realize that this mundane coziness is precisely the point. If Heidecker might not be thinking all that hard on the album’s first side, he is making up for that fact in spades on the second. The turn comes with what is perhaps Slipping Away’s best song, “Something Somewhere.” “There is a feeling I get when things are going good but it’s coming to an end, a kind of sadness/ Then it passes, and I pack it into the back of my head,” sings Heidecker. Just as he clearly professes his purpose with the blissful tunes of side one of the record, so too does he outline his intention here. These are those thoughts in the back of his head, unable to remain as tightly packed as he may hope.
Death, destruction and desolation are all over the last half of Slipping Away; the abandoned bookstores of “I Went To Town,” the falling birds and burning cities of “Bows and Arrows,” the dark clouds blowing over the mountain in “Bells Are Ringing.” Thankfully, the music itself isn’t quite as dour as the subject matter might suggest, but, by the album’s conclusion, the goofy dad sitting on a recliner by the pool has been conclusively replaced by one taking stock of the full gamut of his experience.
Label: Bloodshot
Year: 2024
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