|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Fires On The Ocean, Echoes, Perfect For Shattering, Going Up North (Icicles), Wooden Bars, Catherine Elizabeth, Nico Norte, Words Hang In The Air, Fjords Of Winter, In A Certain Place, Brighton Bound, The Reclusive Hero, The Glass Pane, Caton Gardens |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| » |
Peter Paphides - Time Out
|
"As Autumn gently begins to assert itself and back to school signs begin to appear everywhere, so the playlist changes accordingly. Out with 'Beach Boys' Party!' and 'Mr Tambourine Man'; in, respectively, with 'Sunflower' and 'The Notorious Byrd Brothers' - because at this transitional time, you want records that hang suspended beautifully between carefree joy and decay.
The fourth album by New York's finest practitioners of fey, floral soft rock is a worthy addition to the canon. As with 1999's 'The Albermarle Sound', flutes, violins and the occasional trumpet cushion Gary Olson's lovelorn baritone. Anything you might term production is refreshingly absent - lyrics about smiling trees and riding to California set the scene, conspiring to effect the most delicious sort of false memory syndrome.
'Brighton Bound' and the lysergic harpsichords of 'The Glass Plane' propel you effortlessly to some kind of imagined childhood summer, while the music box waltz shuffle of 'Catherine Elizabeth' compels you to put it between 'The Magic Roundabout' and 'Bagpuss' themes on 'The Most Terrifying Compilation Tape... Ever!' To address Morrissey's famous grievance, none of it will say much to you about your life. But that's precisely its charm." |
|
|
|
| » |
Michael J. Kramer
|
"If you cross Brooklyn's Prospect Park from the yuppie enclave of Park Slope and head into the heart of Walt Whitman's borough, a strange thing happens on the way to Flatbush. Past a few blocks of your typical chain-link playgrounds and modernist-drab apartment buildings, one hits Prospect Park South, a magical neighborhood of turn-of-the-century houses with spiraling turrets, grand balconies, stained-glass bay windows, and well-kept lawns.
It's utterly out of place, an old-New York thrift store of a neighborhood in a Caribbean stew of immigrant working-class families; but it's where Ladybug Transistor creates its latter-day psychedelic pop, dreamily crafted in a home studio fondly known as Marlborough Farms. This group is as beautiful as they sound, beautiful all around seven cute boys and girls in vintage clothing playing flutes and violins, trumpets and oboes, farfisa organ and mellotron over ringing guitars and lightly pulsating drums.
The music is lush and soothing, a swirl of paisley amid the asphalt, tenements, and high rises. If argyle was one of the fabrics in which the Zombies, the Left Banke, and other lesser-known '60s orchestral-pop groups managed to costume rock's rawer sounds, Ladybug Transistor is indeed the argyle heir.
But groovy, man, like, wow, beautiful, as they might seem at first, Ladybug Transistor is not simply a fuzzy nostalgia trip of a band. As with Belle and Sebastian, the Scottish group that also concocts breathlessly gorgeous music from rock's decadent echo-chamber closet of the past, Ladybug Transistor creates bona fide songs on 'Argyle Heir', not just retreads of yesteryear's innocent music-box lullabies.
The group reinvests '60s orchestral pop with a sense of intrigue, powerfully evoking the Victorian parlor room of the soul this sort of music has always sought to enter. 'Argyle Heir' welcomes a listener into its many nooks and crannies, oddly-shaped corners and gilded foyers. Sit down here, say the tremolo guitar chords and trilling organ figures elegantly lacing through the pretty, graceful twirls of 'Perfect for Shattering.' Have a cup of tea in the kitchen, the spooky 'Catherine Elizabeth' suggests, with a bit of moonlight coming through her velvet curtain of a melody.
Soon, you feel like you've been in this place for a hundred years, and want to stay for a hundred more. 'Words Hang in the Air' after stories of distant voyages to California ('Nico Norte') and short jaunts around New York ('Brighton Bound'). Let us talk of fantastical things, the trumpet, harpsichord, and sleigh bells on 'Fjords of Winter' demand.
Or things close by, 'In a Certain Place' and 'The Glass Pane' add, observing the warm glow of the musical fire reflecting off the windows. Shall we go for a walk on the grounds, out by the old graveyard, 'Caton Gardens' beckons with its flute? Or should we return again to that room in the attic, the album's other songs seem to ask, among the doilies and dolls, the musty first editions and cobwebbed antiquarian reproductions?" |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE LADYBUG TRANSISTOR
Website
»
The Ladybug Transistor are from New York. Brooklyn to be exact. The past five years have seen them evolve from a three-piece band into a six-piece mini orchestra.
The current line up was solidified in 1997 after the release of Beverley Atonale, their first full-length L.P. for Merge. Two years later "The Albemarle Sound" was released to much acclaim. Dubbed the last great pop album of the century, it was a landmark for the group and won them new audiences worldwide. Several tours of the United States and Europe ensued.
In 2001 The Ladybug Transistor released "Argyle Heir" recorded as always at the band's Marlborough Farms headquarters in Brooklyn with Gary Olson and William Wells at the helm.
Argyle Heir's 14 new songs, together with the band-?s built-in flair for arranging them, add even more dimension and density to the established Ladybug sound.
|
|
|
