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Soundcarriers | Harmonium

Melodic (2009)
By DEVIN KING  |  May 27, 2009
2.0 2.0 Stars

090522_soundcarriers_main

The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression. Still, their loping AM-radio psychedelia — like later Stereolab or lighter Dungen — engages with enough noise (if not complex rhythms) to keep the band out of mawkish territory.

"Cannonball" begins with a high guitar note that sounds as if, at the right level, it could damage my speakers — as if Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" had been recorded to sound like the turmoil it represented. "Been Out to Sea" has an oscillating synth bass that dirties up the song's Hammond/dulcimer combo and distracts you from the band's lazy repetition of the title throughout. Indeed, the lyrics seem written under tapestries and amid nag champa smoke; they're the weakest link.

"Time Will Come" brings more title repetitions; in "Volcano," a heavily distorted voice tells us, "There's a fire." And "Let It Ride" relies on easy homophones: "In my mind . . . the echoes remain . . . I don't mind." My unasked-for rewrite? "Is it horrific . . . or terrific . . . to be so soporific?"

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ARTICLES BY DEVIN KING
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  •   FATHER MURPHY | ... AND HE TOLD US TO TURN TO THE SUN  |  July 29, 2009
    Harking back to an America where one's own lonely voice was the only radio and a BBQ meant a spit in the middle of the desert, Torino's Father Murphy hide detuned industrial textures within stripped-down, spacy folk instrumentation, like a man in a black hat picking up a bullet-riddled guitar with which to serenade his captives.
  •   SOUNDCARRIERS | HARMONIUM  |  May 27, 2009
    The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression.
  •   THE MOVING PICTURES  |  May 12, 2009
    If one way that bands tie themselves to the past is through sonic reference — Fleet Foxes calling forth Crosby, Stills and Nash, or Animal Collective channeling the Grateful Dead — then there's been a number of bands who tie themselves to the past through cultural reference.
  •   VARIOUS ARTISTS | OPEN STRINGS: 1920S MIDDLE EASTERN RECORDINGS  |  May 06, 2009
    Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.
  •   PAPERCUTS | YOU CAN HAVE WHAT YOU WANT  |  April 14, 2009
    Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."

 See all articles by: DEVIN KING

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