Kapsize - The Captain's Recordings - Post Parlo

Review by: Jennifer Perkins

Last night I was driving down the road with my boyfriend playing Kapsize’s The Captain’s Recordings. After awhile he looked over at me quizzically and said: “How many times have you listened to this thing?” “Why?” I said. “Because you know every word” was his response.

I’m a little late with this review. The Captain’s Recordings is not brand new and unfortunately Kapsize has already broken up. However, in their short, but prolific life they have managed to leave us with some genuine and heart felt songs that if more people knew about would make the memory of this band go on for a long time.

Songs on the CD while all the while maintain a sense of minimalism have enough range to distinguish individual tracks and pick out favorites. There are poppy and upbeat numbers with xylophones and scaling guitars like “Out the Weekend”. Then as if a yin to that yang the very next song, "Quiet Enough", is stripped down and barren - just a boy and his guitar.

Two of my favorite songs on the disc have backing female vocals contributed by Austinite Teressa Brake known for her work with bands like Roar! Lion and The Blue Lies. “I See Ghosts ” is a slow sparse number about the return of a long lost love. Actually, all the songs on The Captain’s Recordings are fairly sparse consisting mainly of guitar, drums, and doubled vocals. Their simplicity is half the beauty of the whole thing. “Alone on the Highway” makes you think Ben Dickey chief songwriter as well as vocal and guitar man must have had his little heart broken one too many times. You can just feel his pain with every melancholy strum of his acoustic guitar and in lyrics like “I think I deserve a warm body to hold me”.

If there is such a thing as acoustic punk rock, that describes “Dutch Door”. It’s a shame the band has broken up because one of the things that made them so endearing were their live performances. Mr. Dickey sitting furiously strumming the guitar in his lap rocking back and forth like everything he was singing about was happening to him all over again at that very moment. At the end of “Dutch Door” you felt like not only must he have permanently damaged his vocal chords, but that he was going to stand up and smash his acoustic guitar on the ground.

I’m a sucker for anyone with a slightly off key voice choked full of emotion and an acoustic guitar in their lap. How can you not be? Think of the first time you heard early Ben Lee or how your chest hurts when Mac’s voice cracks in a Superchunk ballad. Kapsize has the same brazen honesty in their songwriting and heart wrenching emotion in their delivery. The Captain’s Recordings is emotional, but not depressing or sad, cathartic is a better word.