filed under Music
#16. The Future Is Now
8:39AM ON
12/03/2008
BY
Matthew Lawrence
(For the next ten days, I’ll be counting down the list of my 20 favorite albums of 2008. Obviously I didn’t hear every album that came out–although I did hear quite a lot of them–and obviously personal taste factors into this quite a bit, so I can tell you now that if you’re looking for gospel or metal recommendations this isn’t the list for you. But let’s not squabble, let’s just appreciate all the nice music that folks are making. I’ll be posting about two albums a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, from now until next Friday.)
16.
Future Clouds and Radar
Peoria
Star Apple Kingdom
The return of the eight-song album makes me really happy. People seem to have finally (finally!) realized that CDs don’t all need to be 75 minutes long just because they physically can be.
My favorite eight-song album of the year is by Austin’s Future Clouds and Radar, a group that make pretty power-pop with fake British accents. The follow-up to their double debut album [Who does that?!], Peoria is full of catchy melodies, odd instrument choices, solid lyrics and, best of all, Harrison’s very Robyn Hitchcock-esque voice.*
“She talks and I’m wrapped/in my white suit, like a full-body cast” starts the sad but pretty Mummified, which might be the best song on the album. “But there’s room for both of us/ in my cool sarcophogus.” The song goes on for seven minutes, with a weird improv-y sounding piano interlude. Harrison’s sort of nuts, I guess, but this translates into a well-made album a lot better than, say, the last Of Montreal record.
Peoria plays like a two-sided record; tracks 1 and 5 sound like singles, and tracks 4 and 8 are longer, weirder things. I like when bands do that. And the kooky production (horns, echoes, some kind of inhaling sound on the instrumental Mortal 926) manages to prevent the songs from sounding the same. And at thirty-four minutes (including two long songs), you can listen to it repeatedly without tiring of it.
Listen! Future Clouds and Radar, Feet on Grass
(*This year I’ve been very into singers that sound like other singer, like Scary Mansion’s Cat Power-y album and Von Hayes’ Evident Eyelid, which sounds more like Guided By Voices than most Guided By Voices albums do.)
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