Local musician, Robert Skoro, entices fans to “listen again”

-- Bob Longmore

Most local musicians, if they are talented and extremely lucky, get one chance to ascend beyond the Twin Cities and make a name for themselves nationally. But Robert Skoro’s story is a little different.

With Robert Skoro’s sophomore album, “That These Things Could Be Ours,” he is getting a second chance of sorts. Skoro first appeared on the local music scene as a cherubic-faced 17-year-old bass player for Mason Jennings. Skoro spent four years touring the country, playing in small bars, and then theaters, and then opening for acts such as Jack Johnson. Skoro helped Mason Jennings become a self-sustaining and much-buzzed-about act, serving as Jennings’ right-hand man for two albums and countless concerts.

Then, at age 22, Skoro suddenly left the band. He left what he helped build and start from scratch, only this time Skoro was on his own. It was 100 percent his voice and vision. He had a handful of songs, demos really, recorded mostly by himself. He played a few solo shows and then released the demos as the album “Proof.”

The album captured listeners with its intimacy and a closeness rarely found outside the realm of this style of homemade recordings. It was as if listeners were standing outside the closed door of Skoro’s bedroom as he was singing songs inside, singing for himself, oblivious to the world. This is how buzz begins, good or bad.

One local magazine named him Artist of the Year while another local magazine named him Worst Artist of the Year. The truth lies somewhere between these two hyperbolic extremes. Skoro’s heart-on-the-sleeve emotion can be hard to take seriously sometimes, but given a chance, the listener realizes that this singer’s emoting in earnest.

While “Proof” was certainly low-key and likely never heard by many beyond the upper Midwest, it did manage to get Skoro a deal with indie record label YepRoc. This brings us to “That These Things Could Be Ours,” Skoro’s new record. While “Proof” saw Skoro as “basement-musician, jack-of-all-trades,” “That These Things…” finds Skoro with a fully realized band and an actual studio at his disposal. Sacrificed in this big sound is the immediacy that encompassed “Proof,” but that is not a slight on the new album. With a few listens, the realization sets in that these are those same basement-style, “lo-fi” songs seen to their rightful sonic end.

From the first song you realize that Skoro is not going to be afraid to let loose on this new record. His soft child-like falsetto has turned into a growl on “All the Angles” where he begins, “Like the flower on my lapel/ life is heaven pinned on hell.”

There is dense instrumentation fully interlocked into one another. The band doesn’t sound like disparate layers piled on one another, as on “Proof,” but instead forms a big, lush, unified sound. (Comparisons to “Death Cab for Cutie” would not be apocryphal.) The piano fits perfectly between the pockets of restrained bass playing and the strumming of guitars. The drums are spare at moments, lingering in the backbeat, until they burst and drive the songs home like on “Hungry Ghost,” which exemplifies the push-and-pull balance dramatically. The song begins with the familiar Skoro whisper singing over a lightly strummed acoustic guitar and softly brushed snare syncopation. A toy piano sound helps the melody roll and undulate until two-thirds of the song have passed and Skoro’s whisper turns into a scream, “You know I’ve been around/ but you hold your own/ better than me/ Standing on the ground/ that we both now know/ won’t come for free.”

There is evidence that Skoro is trying to experiment with the straightforward folk-song type structure of 4/4 rhythms and verse-chorus-verse structure. On “Boo Hoo,” a carnival-type atmosphere is created with stop-start melodies, marimba percussion, synthesizer waves of sound, and a carnival barker delivery.

There are a few misses on the album such as “Old Friend,” where Skoro’s singing sounds forced and uneasy, and “The Package,” where a cheesy chorus sounds like it could be lifted from any late ’90s alternative band—think Matchbox 20. It definitely took a few listens to get into the nuances of the instrumentation and the way Skoro’s voice floats up and down around the melody; but I like music that challenges the ear to keep up, and that is what any good album should do: Make you want to listen again.

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