A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Deception

[October 15th, 2003] Michael Johnson was temping at a musicology institute when he met a crumpled old Britisher named Tad Middling, pushing a broom.

Middling, a janitor with a music Ph.D., felt an immediate kinship with Johnson, whose band Reclinerland follows the penurious calling of Portland indie-pop.

These downtrodden gentlemen-scholars forged an unusual collaboration, Ideal Home Music Library. Library--featuring old show tunes unearthed in archives by Middling and performed by Reclinerland--is a trove of romance and whimsy centered on Johnson's suave baritone and piano-playing.

The album digs out obscure treasure indeed. "The Lady from Reims" is a ragtime-flavored World War I-era ditty by black American composer Albus White, tossed off with roguish brio in a guest turn by the Decemberists' Colin Meloy. "Crash Site" is a one-song opera by Soviet iconoclast Yosef Molchayevich. Et cetera.

So that's the story. And though it's total bullshit, Michael Johnson's sticking to it most of the time.

Johnson invented Middling, made up weirdo composers and back stories for each of Library's 12 songs. He can talk about the album "in character" or for real.

In one sense, faux-antique, piano-driven, fictional "show tunes" mark an oddball switch from the crisp pop of recent Reclinerland recordings. On the other hand, the project suits Johnson, an inventive and musically insatiable gent who has never hesitated to throw, say, a string trio into his songwriting.

"This is the first time I had a goal as a songwriter beyond just sitting in my bedroom, writing about my innermost angst," he says. "I had an idiom I had to work in. I had to make up stories that weren't about me. And though that sounds limiting, I found that it really opened me up as a songwriter."

He cites "The Lady from Reims" as an example of the lengths the album pushed him to.

"I had to learn about ragtime," he says. "And I had to learn some French. And then I had to think of a story that would tie ragtime together with French lyrics, so I came up with this idea about World War I...."

You get the idea. By solving a self-imposed and seemingly self-limiting problem, Johnson worked songwriting muscles he otherwise wouldn't touch. And yet, because he and a handful of guests sing these ballads with feeling, it doesn't sound like a mere songwriting exercise.