Sunday, March 11, 2007
...wind swept planes...
this is the first of three cds that sam from the fledgling debacle records up in seattle sent to me. in case you couldn't tell, smooth assailing is becoming the blog ambassador to the emerald city, and i couldn't be happier.
the rose; prickliest of thorns
[2007, debacle]
...wind swept planes... is chad allen and his numerous toys, including, but not limited to actual toys. he also uses the guitar, violin, thumb piano, samples, junk and anything else that he finds lying around.
judging by the kaleidoscopic artwork for the cd and the picture of chad, big beard and long hair, sitting down cross-legged style, surrounded by flower petals, with a smirk that suggests that he
knows something you don't know, i was mentally preparing myself for something along the lines of psych/hippie-folk. undoubtedly, it's incorrect assumptions like this which birthed the adage about not judging books by etc. fine then. the rose is a head trip, to be sure, but it's far less of a straight-forward one than i would've expected. it screams bedroom experimentation, and that's a positive critique. i thoroughly enjoy the recorded quality of it.
poppies suffocating roses is the closest thing to a conventional sounding psych-folk song and it's also chad's most memorable one. it's very bare, mostly there's just a simple, and catchy, rhythm on the acoustic guitar coupled with some jangly percussion and later on some foot stomping. his singing starts off in kind of a whisper, but as poppies builds, he turns it into a nice falsetto. the nine minute long (the album itself is only thirty-one minutes) thorn of salt is really the only gripe that i have with the rose. i probably wouldn't have minded it if it were at least half that length, because there's a good and eerily noisy background, but the purposely kooky singing, channeling early nick cave it seems, grows tiresome after awhile. then there's playful songs like the album opening twining twixt, as well as sweet red, which come closer in sound to the woefully under appreciated micose & the mau maus. the rose; prickliest of thorns has far more enjoyable moments than anything else. so far so good.
Aphids & Blood
the rose; prickliest of thorns
[2007, debacle]
...wind swept planes... is chad allen and his numerous toys, including, but not limited to actual toys. he also uses the guitar, violin, thumb piano, samples, junk and anything else that he finds lying around.
judging by the kaleidoscopic artwork for the cd and the picture of chad, big beard and long hair, sitting down cross-legged style, surrounded by flower petals, with a smirk that suggests that he
knows something you don't know, i was mentally preparing myself for something along the lines of psych/hippie-folk. undoubtedly, it's incorrect assumptions like this which birthed the adage about not judging books by etc. fine then. the rose is a head trip, to be sure, but it's far less of a straight-forward one than i would've expected. it screams bedroom experimentation, and that's a positive critique. i thoroughly enjoy the recorded quality of it. poppies suffocating roses is the closest thing to a conventional sounding psych-folk song and it's also chad's most memorable one. it's very bare, mostly there's just a simple, and catchy, rhythm on the acoustic guitar coupled with some jangly percussion and later on some foot stomping. his singing starts off in kind of a whisper, but as poppies builds, he turns it into a nice falsetto. the nine minute long (the album itself is only thirty-one minutes) thorn of salt is really the only gripe that i have with the rose. i probably wouldn't have minded it if it were at least half that length, because there's a good and eerily noisy background, but the purposely kooky singing, channeling early nick cave it seems, grows tiresome after awhile. then there's playful songs like the album opening twining twixt, as well as sweet red, which come closer in sound to the woefully under appreciated micose & the mau maus. the rose; prickliest of thorns has far more enjoyable moments than anything else. so far so good.
Aphids & Blood
:: posted by avant gardening, 6:07 PM