drapery dept.
[2006, house of alchemy]

(vxpxc) are an experimental three-piece (though, sometimes they have more members, for this particular release the line-up doubled in size) who hail from southern california. the core members, judging by their myspace page, are justin mcinteer, grant capes and tim goodwillie. tim's little girl cat also lends her vocal talents to drapery dept.

the disc opens up with the excellent, and appopriately named, wailing drones, which is just that. well not just that, but you get me. this ten minute long track is firmly centered around warm guitar drones, but there's also the vocal wails in the background (they don't persist throughout the entire song), the sound of jingling bells and other inoffensive noises. occasionally, there's some shouting and talking from cat, which isn't as bothersome as it might be, and i don't like kids, so that's saying something. (vxpxc) don't change up the sound a great deal during wailing drones, but they do add more instrumentation to it as it progresses. the general feel here is a pleasingly blissful one. they continue the bliss-out with the following track, ballad of the empty room, begging you to harken back to the heydey of shoegaze, minus the reverb soaked singing. this song rides a memorable synth line and does a terrific job combining catchier bits of music with more abstract concepts. no bop bop bop breaks out of the dronier territory and edges into psych-folk. there's some stringed instrumentation (pretty sure that's not a standard guitar) over swirling background noise and affected guitar as well. again, there's some more vocal work from cat, she's on probably half of the songs, but she's used sparingly and, on some of the tracks, including the opener, makes a pleasant addition. she brings about an innocent nature that can only improve upon the warm feel on some of tracks. in the walls tonight is hands down my favorite piece of music on here. there's some subdued vocals, mainly in the beginning, atmospheric guitar noise, harmonica and some very nice synthesized sounds making it the catchiest track on the album, without actually striving to be poppy. the next song, caged echoing footfalls, is pretty rhythmic too with its metal percussion and other pounding sounds. one of the things that i like best about this album is how well the songs transition into each other. it seemed like all of the tracks carried some element into the next one. for caged echoing footfalls, it was the synth sound from in the walls tonight. elsewhere, it was metal percussion. their keen sense for segueing was a nice addition.

drapery dept. is the first full album i'd heard from (vxpxc), after downloading a ton of free mp3s from their previous albums off of their old website, and i was heading into this with the notion that it would be more rooted in psychedelic folk, not the case. there's a few forays in that direction, but it's more of an atmospheric album that you can put on and just zone out to, but there are plenty of moments here where (vxpxc) grabs your attention, preventing the album from merely becoming pleasant background music.

Caged Echoing Footfalls

Thanks so much for this thoughtful review. Thanks for listening.

and thank you for checking out the blog.

shit, this is more of a bible than a blog... holy musical scriptures to live by (except for maybe our rambling crap)
keep it coming...

ha, thanks a lot.