I've always really loathed that most common rock criticism crutch: "This band sounds like that band crossed with that other band." Even when writers try to fire up the creativity by throwing prepositional phrases like "on acid" or "in a fight with" into the mix, it remains forced at best, and ridiculous at worst. In my short time at Pitchfork, I've done my best to avoid this.

The fundamental problem with this device is that you have to give the reader too much credit. Now, I'm not calling you ignorant (or, at least, no more ignorant than I am). But it's comparable to looking up a term in the dictionary and finding a single-word definition. A word you don't understand. My hyper-abridged and space-conscious old student dictionary provides a handy example:

furze -- n. gorse.

See what I mean? At that point, I'm almost reluctant to look up "gorse" for fear of a circular definition.

Lucky for me, Mark Never's music doesn't really sound like anyone crossed with anyone else. On acid, doing gymnastics, or otherwise. Afternoon Drift, Cold Shoulders is the bipolar debut from this Tampa Bay-based performance artist. It's a fungal and even mix of half spacy instrumentals, half European bistro trad. The ingredients in this batter are bathtub synth, unabashed poeticism, reedy, squeezebox-like things, and the odd, affected German accent. The result is a discful of soft and galactic music. Toy electronica, queer vaudeville, drone. Lucky for you.

"1)" and "Carnival in the Stars" are complementary slow-motion themes. Serene and spacious, they evoke astronaut ballets and rotating, malevolent space stations. The playful "Bullfrog" sports mythic lyrics-- "He swallows the sun/ And spits back out the sun as the moon--" reminiscent of Indian mythology, sung in the most hammy, irreverent tones Never can muster. The cheesy crooning and concertinas give the track a provincial tone. In the samba-esque "Like Iguanas" and "Coffee and Oranges," Never gleefully continues with the Old World assimilations. Of course, it's pretty obvious throughout these folky numbers that he's nothing more than a tourist on the Continent; a bawdy, crass American.

On Afternoon Drift's sour tracks, Never sounds like just a guy with too much free time on his hands. He ventures into King Missile territory in "Haiku Winter-time" with disastrous results-- atrocious haikus monotoned to crashing drums and faux-string flourishes fade in and out. But the entire three-song centerpiece of the album, beginning with "Drifting for Practice Space," is an exercise is patience. Never's musical indulgences briefly become childish rather than childlike, and the listener is thrust into the role of long-suffering, patient parent.

But occasionally this experimentalism works, as in the tight-lipped storytime of "The Island Stayed True." Vivid Peter Pan dreamery is recited atop quivering synthesizers. The short "Water Cooler" pulses along on a single meditative keyboard chord resulting in gentle, throbbing peace. "Starlight/Pine Trees" and "Cricket Violin" are Siamese twin songs, filmic in the darkest Disney sense. Eerie and beautiful instrumental twinkling stands ungarnished.

For the warped and weird, Never's their goofy bard. I tend to agree with his self-assessment: when the avant is reined in (common) or used successfully (less common), Afternoon Drift, Cold Shoulders is "a whispery gem."

-John Dark