Novi Split – Pink in the Sink (Hush Records)
At three years in the making, Novi Split’s Pink in the Sink doesn’t sound as dense or fabricated as such a lengthy recording process might lead one to presume. Instead, it is a selection of analogous indie pop songs that each, with maneuvers congruous but laudable, try to mask themselves. ‘Doctor’, for example, implores thick bass and faux hip-hop backbeat to mask its otherwise complacent form; elsewhere are keyboards and strings. It is a common and often credible technique and Novi Split cannot be faulted for the effort; indeed, though I find cause for dissent, an affable sensation for the LP has found me unawares, like George, the elementary classmate I didn’t like because I didn’t have anything to say to him but through association – in this case, we both (Novi Split and I) like music with melody – and time I found I liked him enough that I felt bad about not having anything to say to him.
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The immediate comparison to Elvis Perkins’ songwriting being Bob Dylan,
A brief spell of hysterical, horror-movie organ (“Turn Up the Ghosts Part I”). A percussive pitter-patter atop a xylophone (“!Um!Hot.”) Aside from these brief forays, and perhaps one or two others, Dat’r’s first release, Turn Up the Ghosts, could almost be considered one song with some key changes, not truly a detriment as surely its creators had this in mind. I thought of the alternative title, Just Keep Going.
A female, VICTORIA (21) and a male, JONAH (26) sit on a beach together, in sand, facing the audience. Umbrellas perch over their heads and an icebox sits stage left. Victoria wears a bikini top and shorts, expensive sunglasses and flip-flops. Jonah wears an old, white undershirt and shorts. Jonah is smoking a cigarette while Victoria leans back, trying to get tanned. She has a hand down Jonah’s shorts.
Panda Bear (basically Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox) has an enviable knack for making music that sounds like a thousand different influences but also like nothing you’ve heard before. The most telling influence on the third Panda Bear release, Person Pitch, being the Beach Boys, who are all over the LP’s pop melodies; the vocals themselves, reverb’d to the nines, have Lennox sounding as though he’s Brian Wilson’s grandson who’s found a chest full of granddad’s forgotten tunes.
While Air hasn’t made me sweat since Virgin Suicides, they were at least still sexy, still swinging, still moving. Pocket Symphony, their sixth release, at its most frenetic, sort of jogs in place. The precision with which it does this is haunting. Recorded with a seething warmth (as though in God’s own bedchamber) that usually only comes in pill form, Symphony is a conscious decision by the band – in the writing, production, execution – to stand still.
Having as much to do with Roxette as with anyone else (no light compliment) the Rosebuds’ third LP is a mildly moving (as in dancing), mildly hooky and mildly successful affair. With disco rhythms and pop synths Furies, while perhaps narrow in form and execution, covers ground surfy (‘Silence by the Lakeside’), sultry & noirish (‘I Better Run’) and anthemic in sing-a-long ‘Silja Line,’ which prattles for two minutes before delivering the best moment on the record. The title track and closer, which is funky, fun, wistful and eerie, is the epitome of what the Rosebuds are after; that crystallization of numberless influences into one band’s sound.