Music Features

Progressive party

By TED DROZDOWSKI  |  December 6, 2006

d their elegant and colorful singer, Kara Trott — agree on this. And as Thompson puts it, they hope that voice will “appeal to those people who may be dissatisfied with commercial radio these days.”

It has already appealed to a section of the Boston club crowd that’s a little less than enamored of the city’s long-time infatuation with garage and punk rock. Although Fluttr Effect still play small, comfortable rooms like the Lizard Lounge, their local shows this year have been mostly in the Middle East’s big downstairs room, where rock can be writ large as it should be, and where the band return December 16. And they have the right tools for the task. Really, they’ve had them right from the bedroom recordings that made up their 2004 debut, Trithemis Festiva (Trojan Horse). All four instrumentalists and Trott command the chops to play tunes with shifting time signatures, the smarts to dive headlong into textural explorations, and the joy and the will to improvise. Although Marking Time isn’t about improvisation — it’s about precision and emotional focus.

Kidwell: “This album is much closer to our vision of what we want the band to be than the first one. There’s better production and a lot of new sounds. Making the first album and a four-song demo taught us what we needed to do to make a real album happen.”

Thompson: “We often take for granted the skills of everyone in the band. But the amount of shows and the touring we’ve done has given us a much better idea of each other’s capabilities.”

Stoyanova adds that “the pre-production was a lot more extensive, and we had time to live with the tracks we recorded and revisit them if we wanted to. For the first album, Val and I had just switched from acoustic cello and marimba to using digital media and effects, so for the new album we were much better at utilizing those things.” Thompson, Stoyanova, and Trott have also labored hard on their Fluttr Effect Trio, an offshoot of the band that released its debut, Swallows and Sparrows (Trojan Horse), in the spring. Hence the sweeping, piano-like marimba and the warm, deep, hairy purr of the cello on “Hollywood Is Porn,” the 11-minute suite at the center of Marking Time.

“Hollywood Is Porn” is a crash course in Fluttr Effect’s virtues. It has grand shifts in tempi and dynamics, a wide array of sounds that embrace the tones of classic ’70s electronic keyboards and cutting-edge guitars, and a sophisticated level of interplay. Its story is timeworn: a young idealistic woman gets used and abused by the film industry. The lyrics also work as a metaphor for the exploitative nature of all commerce, to get a bit Marxist on your asses.

What makes the piece go, however, is Trott’s emotional range. She can hold a note in a firestorm of sound without quavering (though she’s got a great vibrato), but what she does best is singer-as-actor. As the story progresses, she strips layers of optimism from her rich voice until she sounds desiccated — lovely, round-toned, but desiccated. On stage she twists her body as she curls her melodies, wearing the likes of a faux-blood-spattered wedding dress, or decorating herself with bits of animal bones or skins that reflect her Native American heritage. She’s both earthy and otherworldly.

Marking Time, which the band made and self-pressed with loans and donations from fans and friends, does have a national distributor. So Fluttr Effect plan to do more touring in 2007. And of course these rockin’ workaholics are already wrestling with songs and strategizing for their next CD, which they feel will be more collaboratively arranged and written.

FLUTTR EFFECT | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | December 16 | 617.864.EAST

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