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One Fresh Spin, One Old Gem
By Marc
Stephens
There are about
a hundred indie bands out there just like Plus/Minus (Apples in
Stereo, Postal Service, Rogue Wave). But with this elegant and
magnificently sophisticated release, James Baluyut & Co. sprint
away from the pack, distinguishing themselves as perhaps the
best the crowded and underachieving field of “jumpy synth-pop”
has to offer — and maybe one of the foremost bands in all of
independent music.
Legions of rock
’n’ roll fans would fall head over heels for a record like this,
if they ever in a million years chanced to hear it. But they
won’t. And that’s a real shame, because with Let’s Build A
Fire Plus/Minus proves that where studio competence and
sparkling production values are concerned, a top-notch indie
release can indeed compete quality-wise with anything else out
there, “adult” and “corporate” rock included. Exquisitely hushed
progressions; impassioned, lilting vocals and acoustics; and,
when called for, just the right touch of bombast: The sheer
mind-quickening maturity of these songs simply reaches out and
slaps the listener silly with appreciation. After weeks of
trying to classify Fire with regard to the pantheon of
music taxonomy, believe it or not the categorization that comes
closest for diverseness and texture is ’70s Makeout Album
(seriously!). Think Bread, or maybe America’s Greatest Hits,
and you’re getting warm — except more angular, and indie all the
way, with epic arrangements and remarkably intricate drumming
schemes whose riveting syncopation adds oomph yet somehow never
trips over itself. Indeed, so good is Fire that a single
Track to Try would only shortchange the album’s emotional beauty
and swerving complexity. No foolin’ — this is as gorgeous as
independent music gets. Don’t miss it.
Online Tracks:
***
After crafting
some of the finest art-pop of the 1970s (or any decade for that
matter), Be Bop Deluxe ex-frontman Bill Nelson decided to spend
the rest of his life indulging the noise-loving ADD sufferer
buried inside him. Since 1979 he’s released dozens of
all-over-the-place sonic experiments, most of them firmly
enmeshed in three-star territory — interesting, but far from
essential. Magnificent Dream People is the grand
exception, a stream (dream?) of consciousness album bursting
with so many neat intersecting ideas it’s a wonder he got them
all down in time.
Perhaps matched
only by Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard in terms of
prolificacy, it’s fairly apparent from his work that Nelson is
at his happiest only when entombed in a recording studio.
Unfortunately his post-Deluxe results are decidedly mixed.
There’s no filter to his uniquely copious muse — pretty much
everything he can think of ends up on the vinyl, inspired or
not. But for some reason on this particular record all these
disparate psychic tributaries clicked, yielding a quirky,
strangely compelling aural experience unlike any other in my
collection. Magnificent Dream People is probably best
described as the dreams of a hundred different individuals,
distilled down to 50 minutes and then split into 14 mesmerizing
songs. The lyrics, such as they are, seem so far off the wall
that in aggregate they end up making a strange kind of sense.
(“We ain’t got no money honey, but we got brains .... Circle the
world in a paper canoe .... Ah, what a marvelous radio!”) As a
rule Nelson’s guitar work never disappoints either, yielding an
oddly cerebral fantasia of imagination resembling nothing so
much as a preternaturally accurate Ouija board on steroids.
Online Track:
Marc Stephens
is a Web consultant by day, writer by night. Comments? E-mail
sunpostmusic@bellsouth.net. |
