Sian Alice Group – 59.59 (The Social Registry)
This is all chase. Violins drawing out notes, electric guitar picking chords, piano keys eloquent, synth sustaining the vibrant persistent hum. The songs on Sian Alice Group’s debut LP, 59.59, gnaw at the listener like a receding toothache or a descending revelation. The album’s opening moments are lovely splurts and blurbs of matter, eventually taking form in a plucked guitar chord. The LP’s four Interludes include fun with wood on glass (tink tink glick glink); “Interlude 7’35”” is a beautiful meandering piano with a steady firmament of synth, and if I didn’t know any better I would say it wasn’t a song at all. The remaining two Interludes (19’39” & 46’51”) are an underwater narcotic and the birds chirping at the close of “When…” must be a joke: if this is a daytime record it is through the shocking haze of opiates.
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“I hear the ambulance towards you.” A woman somewhere on Broadway said this into her cell phone as I made my way to the Knitting Factory. Halloween in New York City was busy; and if you weren’t in costume, those who were let you know what they thought about it. Happily, the Factory’s bands (save opener Ortolon) put forth the costuming effort and the audience only listened.
When the Dandy Warhols began playing “Bohemian Like You” midway through the set, it struck me how very long this band has been in my life. I began to imagine all of the used cars, diners, lawns and parking lots I came of age in, the Dandy’s serenading my hedonism from the car’s open windows. I thought of how loving a piece of artwork has much to do with loving the time in your life occupied by that artwork. Then the Dandy’s fucked up and – with steel balls –started the song over.