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Be Small
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Be Small
Current price: $15.99
Barnes and Noble
Be Small
Current price: $15.99
Size: CD
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With an intentionally brighter personality than prior
LPs -- from time to time even managing outright infectiousness, if of a trippy, textured variety -- the band's fourth long player,
, is a more modest production than their last effort, the
-produced
. A self-produced home recording made with the core of just leader
and guitarist
, it still bears
's usual tension between pop and free-form, and with other performers lending a hand and
behind the wheel, personnel may be a technicality. The album's lead single, "Falling," is a catchy, kaleidoscopic celebration that jumbles love, sleep, dreaming, memory, and metaphor ("Who is the lucid in your mile high dream") under the guise of a chipper chorus ("You're fallingâ?¦falling in love"), with an ending that "could pull the rug out from an upright man." Similarly, on the scathing "Candy Apple," distorted guitars and synths combine with percussion for a rhythmically fetching head-bobber while
's layered, patented falsetto sings wryly of "here in the New York City," including "we spread our legs of restlessness to grab our piece of pie." (He takes on income inequality and more, elsewhere.) The musical tone gets more sincere and the lyrics more introspective for the intimate synth-folk ballad "Ordinary Feeling" and the elegant, British Invasion-conjuring "Girls in the Early Morning." While the majority of
feels upbeat, it remains lyrically pensive and full of unexpected musical turns and passages (the title track floats through modulations while channeling '70s funk and dramatic soft rock). It's often tricky both songwriting- and production-wise to try to distinguish between
and
solo material, though
remains more impressionistic on the whole. Here, maybe it's best not to worry about attribution so much as be glad
keeps creating, and in his unpredictable and appealing way;
is loaded with simply good, interesting songs. ~ Marcy Donelson