If you’re a longtime reader, you’re probably familiar with our ongoing love affair with New Orleans’ Park the Van Records. It’s pretty rare that PTV puts out a record that isn’t up our street. Floating Action, Golden Boots, The Peekers, Generationals and (although they’re now with ANTI) Dr. Dog are all PTV artists that tickle our collective fancies in one way or another. (There is some internal variation amongst us dicks; James is probably our hardest core Golden Boots supporter, while I’m on a bit of an island with my unabashed Peekers-ophilia, but you get the idea.) Suffice it to say that when we caught wind of a new artist on PTV, we got excited. Our anticipation was rewarded with a titillating EP from newcomers Giant Cloud.
Old Books is a twenty-six minute amalgam of a whole mess of comforting genres, resulting in an insulating listening experience that both soothes and agitates in equal measure. (If I had to stamp a label on it, I’d go with quasi-psych folk with a strong helping of the acoustic ambient.) There’s a certain sonic density to the five songs on Old Books that belies its lightness; there’s a lot of sound to parse through, but none of it is particularly loud. The band’s moniker might offer the best description of their sound; drifting through a giant cloud would provide a thick, impenetrable surrounding, but would be composed of the lightest of elements. The sound of Giant Cloud is one to get lost in, drifting among the often angelic vocals and pillowy, semi-symphonic soundscapes.
The songs on Old Books generally take their time to develop, meandering across several minutes, finding a groove and rolling with it on occasion. It’s only an EP, but three of the songs clock in at over five minutes, so there’s a kind of semi-albumish feel going on. The best songs all have a distinct flourish of some sort; “Strange Peaches” snaps out of a somnolent march into a frenetic, near-ragtime acoustic explosion. “Old Soul,” the stellar, rambling closer is almost a waltz through the middle section, but grows an almost vaudevillian set of balls towards the end. It’s the kind of EP that builds excitement for the band’s future work; they’re getting ready to record a full-length, which I’m already eager to hear.
We’ve got two tracks below from the EP that offer a solid taste of what the band is about. The intertwined male/female vocals that stand out on “Fingernails” are all over the record, as is that fuzzed-up acoustic shimmer. “Rainbows,” the EP’s opener, offers an indicative sample of the emotional tenor of the record; that equable tone is all over the rest of the tracks. The tempo shift around the three minute mark is a killer example of the chamelonic nature of many of the songs. If you dig these, you’ll dig the rest. Even better, you can grab it here for one single American dollar (I’ll assume this is a limited time thing, so get on it).
In other news, you might have noticed that I’ve been curiously mum about the recent release of Vampire Weekend’s sophomore record. I’ve been public about my deep anticipation for Contra and have wrangled in this forum with the generalized bad taste “Horchata” left in my mouth and the resplendent glee I got from “Cousins.” I’d hoped that Contra would be pakced with a “Cousins” vibe and bereft of the bloated self-importance that plagued “Horchata.”
I haven’t written about Contra yet because we only like to tell you about records that we like. Our express mission is to avoid the kind of petty dismemberments that many blogs traffic in. It is easy to say mean things about marginal art. I could bang out a nasty review that belittles music that I find distasteful with ease. (Believe me. We lob out nasty jokes in the email all the time. We keep those in house cause we’re classy, but we’re not shy amongst ourselves about identifying things we don’t like.) But. Where would that get us? I’d piss off someone who’s done something I’ll never do (even the worst record is more than I’m musically capable of) and you wouldn’t have any new records to listen to. We want to spread the word on stuff that blows our minds. We’ll leave the snide shit for P4K.
That said, “Cousins” is a great song. So is “White Sky.” Those tracks held onto the traits that I loved about the self-titled record: a certain brashness that’s not overbearing, a willingness to synthesize foreign sounds and vibes into a western idiom, a liveliness that served to ammeliorate any tendency towards smugness and, more than anything else, a distilled bit of joy and fun. There’s (maybe) one song that you can’t dance to on the self-titled record. “Cousins” and “White Sky” encourage the same things that many of the old songs did. I’ll leave the rest of the new record without the same ringing endorsement and leave it at that.
I’ll part with the hope that this is a bump in the road. But. Some bands have one great record in them. No matter how I feel about Contra, I will be spinning Vampire Weekend forever. (Justin’s poked some fun at me for this, but this is, ultimately, how I judge records. Will I listen to this in 20 years? The self-titled record is a homerun play for my retirement party.) The musical landscape is littered with Icarus-like bands that flew close to the sun before crashing to the earth. I’ll hope for the best for the third Vampire Weekend record, but I fear the wax is melting.
I’ll leave you with a track to remind you how great this band can be. Remember how excited this made you the first time you heard it?
Vampire Weekend – M79 – Daytrotter Session
