College/Art Rock: Listing Ship's Time to Dream

Even the group’s name is a story, Listing Ship.

Minimalist pop folk compositions greet you on Listing Ship’s Time to Dream, but each sweetly crafted tune has a tale to tell. They have the ability of traditional Irish, English, or Scottish tunes which tell foreboding stories amid reels and jigs. Listing Ship can similarly weave warning, heartache, and hope into their light tunes which bounce and pop.

“American Song,” carried by the lead vocal of Heather Lockie, is a going to war story told from the perspective of the 13-year-old girl, pregnant with this young soldier’s child. It could be World War I; it could be the Civil War; it could the Second Gulf War. The music has allows there to be a timeless quality to the yellowed and/or crisply new pages of this story.

The waltzing feel of “Destroying France” takes us back to the days when Beta and VHS were both still viable options. It’s a childhood of make believe, boring games of Monopoly, and time with siblings. I didn’t pretend to be at war with France, as in the song, but you listen to these sweet vocals on the Lyman Chaffee-penned tune (lyrics by Heather Lockie) and you know that you once played in the backyard in that the same world.

Listing Ship also includes a cover song—well, at least, it’s a cover song in the sense that it is there rendition of an old story. “Ichabod Crane” gives such tenderness to the angular, awkward, sad-for-love Crane. Meanwhile, there’s something telling in singing of Crane’s love named Katrina saying, “For dear Katrina/has true aim/and all the force/of an ample bosom, inheritance, popularity.” Crane is bowled over by Katrina, and for the 2005 hurricane to be named Katrina doesn’t seem such a stretch. Crane didn’t pay attention to Katrina in the right way, and so perhaps we see that the government didn’t pay correct attention to their Katrina.

Thank you to Listing Ship and True Classical CDs for the review copy.