Two years ago, pop singer/songwriter Justin Kline found himself entrapped in an emotional cul-de-sac of sorts and made these 13 everything-laid-bare songs in his home with the intent of bringing himself closure. Brewed from brooding, these lyrics grapple with not being able to get out of bed, relationships that have fizzled and swan-dived, the weight of sadness and the inability to shake it. Though mixed and mastered at Nashville’s Hilson studio, all recording was done solo by Kline with just one mic, an acoustic guitar, shaky shakers, keys, and some occasional bumbling bass.
A highly emotional pop record wouldn’t be news if Cabin Fever Songs wasn’t so uncomfortably candid and if the record wasn’t made by the same guy who made 2010’s Triangle EP, which is as exuberant as if possessed by Richard Simmons. Here, Kline sheds some of the buoyancy and lets himself sink a little, resulting in possibly the best record he’s ever made.
Though the artist has taken his usual cheeriness down a major notch, the sun still filters into his melodies, and his vocals remain the smooth, soft croon of a teenaged Ben Gibbard. It’s Kline’s lyrics that give the record its heavy heart.
“Resurrect With Me” in its entirety, with its vampirish keys creeping in the background, is a haunting puzzle of a song. Kline admits Sylvia Plath-style—“Happiness is dead/or at least gone in my head/it’s in a pair of dead man’s shoes/after all that I have bled/I feel safer in my bed/I can’t escape the Sunday night blues” in “Sunday Night Blues” and in “I Already Do”: “They said baby steps will be fine/but I say cheap bottles of wine.”
Specific names of friends spring up in tracks that are biting, like “Your Mystery” (Stay away/away from me/I don’t need your company/I can fix myself without your mystery), or apologetic, like “Alison, I’m Here,” which drags the listener through a mini odyssey of the artist’s personal life, though nothing hits as hard as Cabin Fever Songs’ finisher, “Congratulations World.” Opened with the warning, “Here comes the bland, bitter song about stuff you don’t care for,” the closing track is the quintessential darkest-before-the-light song: “I spread myself thin/now I’m caving in/congratulations world/I’m giving up.”
Kline has apologized if he sounds like an “artist so tortured by his art crap.” Is he an artist so tortured by his art crap? Of course. He’s bared his art crap to its full extent here, but that doesn’t mean the crap is crappy.
