E-Mail This Article to a Friend Redemption songs Ryan Lee Crosby reemerges with the Mindless BY TED DROZDOWSKI
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Ryan Lee and the Mindless’s There Is No Music (Solari) was one of my favorite local albums of 2005. That’s not exactly a sparkling first sentence, but it is honest, as is the album. It’s a chapter torn from singer-songwriter Ryan Lee Crosby’s psychic diary with the utmost of care, and offered quietly as a lovely, spare tale of despair that ends with the promise of redemption.

Crosby barely lived to tell it, but he does so with a sensitivity and command that reflects the most cohesive, open-hearted narratives of his influences Nick Drake, Syd Barrett, and Elliott Smith, with touches of Syd’s wilder sonic side increasingly cozying up to the acoustic-boned arrangements as this nine-song collection reaches its end.

"A lot of the songs came from my experiences of roughly 2003 and 2004, which was a very dark period," Crosby relates with the same understatement that makes his debut as a leader such a thoughtful, probing gem. How dark? Well, when Crosby applies his sweet, quavering whisper to a lyric like "late last year I nearly died/it was the second time I tried" ("Belief in Me and You"), he’s just stating the facts. Crosby was in the midst of a struggle with an addiction to tranquilizers coupled with heavy habitual drinking, which fueled a wave of ennui that was already overwhelming.

"I had a doctor who was well intentioned, but I would tell him I was trying to quit drinking and I was having trouble and needed to mellow out, so he’d write me a prescription for codeine or tranquilizers, and then I’d take them along with the alcohol," Crosby explains. "There were days that I would just lie in bed sick, trying to figure out what I wanted to do."

Crosby was also estranged from his father, who was suffering from cancer. And his band, the spirited Cancer to the Stars, which lived in the territory between trip-hop, punk, and Radiohead, was fragmenting around him.

"It got to the point where I wanted to make a clean break musically and with other aspects of my life," he says as we shovel in a weekday morning breakfast at the Grecian Yearning diner in Allston, not too far from his home. "At one point I’d even lost my voice, because I was shredding my vocal chords every time I sang with Cancer to the Stars. Even when we practiced I just turned up my guitar and screamed, which was great, I guess, for getting everything I was feeling out. I thought that I probably wouldn’t have any trouble until I was 28 or so [he’s 25], but I was wrong. One day I tried to sing and nothing would come out. That lasted for six weeks. I saw a specialist who said there was no permanent damage, but that I needed to see a vocal coach."

Having slipped from the grasp of addiction and self-destruction a year ago, Crosby began working on the songs for There Is No Music. To a certain extent they were a form of therapy. The fragile state from which numbers like "Belief in Me and You" and "(a person has the right to) Peace in the Home," inspired by the tension Crosby’s father’s cancer caused between the musician’s parents, is reflected in their whispered vocal melodies and the occasional crescendos that snap loose his coils of frustration.

Although Crosby’s too much a storyteller to indulge in pure navel gazing, his autobiographical tales of quiet struggle amount to a broader investigation of what it means to be human — to feel pain, confusion, need, and maybe even satisfaction at fever pitches, as peaks in the valleys of routine that make up our daily lives. And Crosby’s directness and devotion to melody make it all easy to absorb, even if you’ve never chased a Darvon with a gin-and-tonic. By the time he gets to the disc’s final numbers, things are brighter, if not exactly sunny. "In a Little While (everything will be alright)," with its country-rock echoes of both the early 1970s Rolling Stones and Cowboy Junkies, embraces the notion of love as salvation, and carefully tailored electric guitars ignite sonic skyrockets of hope in the mix — even as Crosby sings that "the future’s on fire/my hope dies in you."

As the song’s tectonic plates of sound grind together behind his gentle singing, Crosby’s abilities as an electric guitarist make the album’s concentration on acoustic textures surprising. After all, not every player has a Johnny Greenwood-like command of feedback, tones, and dynamics at their fingertips. John Frusciante is another of Crosby’s touchstones, for both the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist’s conceptual ken and his highly personal solo recordings.

Nonetheless, "I knew I wanted to play quieter music and write more carefully, so building these songs around the acoustic guitar became really important. I was trying to write more carefully and I’m working on continually honing the songwriting process. Cancer to the Stars felt emotional to me, but maybe it was more outwardly emotional, more physical in the way we expressed ourselves live. I wanted to translate that high level of emotional expression to a more personal approach to songwriting, and I needed to achieve that by stripping everything down to a bare minimum, including my voice, so I could concentrate on developing an understanding of what makes a song work for people. I also felt I wanted these songs to be able to speak to a broader audience, so I devoted a lot of attention to what the lyrics said and how they said them — with melodies and strong choruses. I never even thought about writing a chorus with Cancer to the Stars."

Another factor in the easy accessibility of There is No Music is producer Daniel Daskivich, who became friends with Crosby when they both played in the short-lived post-Cancer to the Stars outfit the Gasolines. "Dan knew I was writing songs that the Gasolines had no interest in playing, so he offered to work on them with me," says Crosby.

"I can write a tune and give it to my buddy Dan and he’s very into working on the arrangements and helping me refine it. He’s also much more organized than me and will say, ‘Okay, these songs are ready to get recorded, and it’ll be done on this date,’ and it actually gets done."

Crosby and Daskivich have just started working on new songs, but for now live performances and spreading the word about There Is No Music is their priority. "The album’s just been out for a few weeks, so we’re hoping more people are going to find out about it."

Ryan Lee and the Mindless | Bill’s Bar, 9 Lansdowne Street, Boston | Jan 27 | 617.421.9595