Pram
Somniloquy EP
[Merge; 2001]
Rating: 6.8
Some people don't get excited at the prospect of a new Pram release. They're not
intrigued to discover what aspect of their comfortable childhood will be warped
in the lo-fi playroom phantasmagoria that Rosie Cuckston and her chums call
existence. Perhaps the subdued tack that the band has taken on Somniloquy
will soothe dissenters into compliance.
Ever since 1998's North Pole Radio Station, Pram have been rounding off
the angles of their early albums, Helium and Sargasso Sea. The
songs the band recorded were strangely alluring carnivorous plants with brightly
colored barbs. Those barbs were defenses against the world's complaisance. But
as the band's melodies became more hummable, their lyrics became ever more
menacing. And their new nine-track EP, Somniloquy, begins with a superb
example of this tactic.
Though it relies on a low-rent Mondo Exotico melody, "Mother of Pearl" is, in
fact, a dime store rendering of one of Henry Fuseli's surrealist paintings.
Cuckston sings with Björk-ish glee, "Teaching snails to make pearls/ Coating with
plastic an elastic world," which reminds me of the incidental nocturnal mutants
that border Fuseli's gracefully ghoulish rendering of "Oberon and Titania."
"The Way of the Mongoose" is the first of three previously unreleased tracks,
and harkens back to Pram's earlier tinkling on the borders of melody. Here, the
band smacks away at various objects not previously recognized for their musical
properties before a mariachi-like trumpet sets the party up with a solid Latin
thumpathon. "Monkey Puzzle" begins as spy-flick bossanova while Cuckston
incongruously sings about wanting to live in a "tropicoloured world" without
"black or white interpretations." The song won't add significantly to the
world's appreciation of Pram, but neither does it disgrace the noble institution
of the b-side.
Before the five remixes that most punters are going to leap on, Pram deliver the
tender fairy lullaby, "Clock Without Hands." With the starkest of backing,
Cuckston waltzes and lops from side to side as she sings about a man who's slept
for all his life, and the endless web that binds us all together. It begs the
question: is Rosie a Jedi master or just a discrete bondage freak?
Like-minded infantalists Plone remix "Bewitched" from The Museum of Imaginary
Animals. And though they don't enhance the song all that much, their treatment
has provoked me into digging out my copy of their For Beginner Piano album,
if only to persuade myself that they aren't just a tax write-off for Warp Records.
"Play of the Waves," taken, again, from The Museum of Imaginary Animals,
is slightly glitched and ridden low to the rocky road in the Balky Mule mix.
Elsewhere, Terry:Funken's remix of North Pole Radio Station's "Omnichord"
evolves from a brooding, burbling bossa nova to a clanking Heath Robinson machine
of an instrumental that fellow retro-futurists Manual would sell off some of
their Red Army memorabilia for.
Overrated Twisted Nerve sneaker-freak Andy Votel continues in his underwhelming
streak with his lackadaisical treatment of "The Last Astronaut." Instead, Sir
Real's reworking of "A Million Bubbles Burst" walks away with tonight's big cash
prize. Unlike the other remixers, Sir Real meets Pram on their own territory and
takes them on his own ride. In this case, what begins as "Pram visit the Klanger
settlement of Oliver Postgate's vision of the Moon" is hijacked by John Bonham's
planet-pounding drums. The track is outstanding and, as the title of this EP
suggests, it's the track that even hitherto Pram dissenters will be talking about
in their sleep.
-Paul Cooper, November 6th, 2001