Ladybug Transistor
Argyle Heir
[Merge]
Rating: 6.8
Wait a minute. That is just crazy. A Ladybug Transistor? A Ladybug Transistor?
What kind of Ladybug needs a transistor? Some kind of weird robot bug,
programmed to fly away home? Who would build such a thing? Or is the ladybug
itself a transistor? What fanciful machine would have a Ladybug for a
transistor? How would that work? The entire concept is making me insane.
Still, I must pull it together, unblow my mind, and assess the music of
Argyle Heir. What kind of crazy stockinged beneficiary is that!? These
guys are crazy! Stop. Stop. Must focus. Okay, let's try this again:
Do you love flutes? If so, you might love the fourth full-length studio album
from this acclaimed Brooklyn combo. The crooning baritone, the angel-voiced
backup vocals, and the gentle minstrel accompaniment might be exactly your
thing. If you merely like flutes, you might still find this charming.
After all, the Ladybug Transistor are very well received, critically. Check
out Pitchfork's 8.0 for their previous release, The Albemarle Sound.
They even had a poster featured in the movie High Fidelity! So who am
I to object to their soft balladry?
I like Belle and Sebastian and LT labelmates Magnetic Fields (singer Gary
Olson would be a likely guest on some Stephen Merritt project). But maybe,
if I'd found some other gentle, mellow, competently written records first, I
wouldn't have warmed to those acts so much. Still, I think both Belle and
Sebastian and the Magnetic Fields capture a melancholy that tempers their
sweetness, at a quality above this. Maybe I can only take so much bathtub
music. I have three Belle and Sebastian records and sixty-nine Magnetic
Fields songs. Sixty-nine of them! I'm full up!
Mellowness aside, how are the songs? The opener, "Fire On the Ocean," stops
and starts effectively, and features some useful tempo changes. As does "The
Glass Pane," along with some nice country picking. "Echoes" has a peaceful,
Grateful Dead-type lilt to it. Really, though, there's a lot of sameness on
Argyle Heir, and not nearly enough differentiation. The lyrics, while
not cute or over-psychedelic, are fairly abstract and don't tell much of a
story. And, for all the melodic importance to the record, I don't catch
myself humming any of the tunes when I'm lying around in my sunroom. I hear
all the instruments moving around up and down the scale, but these tunes don't
seem to have the hands to grab with.
Olson's voice is nice, if uninvested emotionally, and he's missed when
instrumental such as "Going Up North (Icicles)" and "Fjords of Winter" take
us inside the elevator. It's not that they can't help their gentle ways; the
Ladybug Transistor (man, that name continues to just absolutely blow my mind!)
betray that they can step up the energy almost as high as Crosby, Stills and
Nash with one teaser that fades in and out (a là Beatles by way of Pavement)
featuring backtracked guitars. Maybe if you play Argyle Heir backward
it will rock.
To the band's credit, this is a fully realized album. I just don't want to
come to the same realization. Four composers all sound like the same creator.
Songs are nicely brief, achieving all their modest ambitions, and end without
fuss. The strings and bouncy keyboards, and of course, the flute, overlap
well. And while I could do without this much flutery, I'm never aggravated by
any Bacharachian gestures. With this kind of music, it's easy to slip into
cute moves, and with the exception of the Merry Olde English waltz time
silliness of "Catherine Elizabeth," the Ladybug Transistor avoid this.
In fact, despite the thoughtfulness of the arrangements, it quickly becomes
clear that nothing truly surprising will ever happen. This act could learn
from another labelmate, Neutral Milk Hotel, about the possibility for
arrangement to enhance and transport instead of merely tastefully support a
song. Of course, it's easy to stumble when pursuing such adventures, but
that's what we expect our artists to risk. They cannot just make pleasant
music that does not actually excite.
Plus, Ladybug Transistor!!! I still can't get over it.
-Dan Kilian