Gingersol’s second album opens with a question, “Where Do I Stand?” — which quickly reveals itself to be rhetorical. For this is the sound of a band that knows exactly where it stands, even if they’re shuffling their feet a little whilst waiting for everyone else to notice.
To borrow from the title’s train metaphor, picture Gingersol standing on a platform, looking a little scruffy and neglected, perhaps, but with first-class boarding passes in their hands. And yes, conductor, the tickets are bought and paid for. Next, imagine some slightly jaded pop heroes sitting in the dining car. There’s Paul Westerberg and Slim Dunlap, slouched next to Grant Lee Phillips and Frank Black and Jeff Tweedy and all the lads from Teenage Fanclub, and maybe a few old grumps like Alex Chilton and Ray Davies. Now think of them all sidling over to make room at the bar, and buying the Gingersol guys a round of coffee and big cigars.
That’s the kind of welcome that a record as good as this will inspire in those who know and love their perfect pop music. Gingersol sounds for all the world as though they are yearning to ache, yet can’t deny their own helpless impulses toward joy. The melodies are so gorgeous that they continually triumph over their inherent tendencies toward brooding and melancholy. As a result, there’s a compelling inbuilt tension and release within Gingersol’s music — an oblivious upbeat of happiness that keeps resurging, in spite of the darkness that worries along underneath the surface.
If Gingersol’s Steve Tagliere and Seth Rothschild sound at times like weary mourners, they’ve not been quite so numbed by grief that they can stop themselves from smiling at the ridiculous, beautiful folly of life and its fleeting pleasures. In this sense, The Train Wreck Is Behind You is profoundly optimistic, moving, and utterly impossible to resist.