“Three-ee, cheers/For your pie, oh, neers,” Dave Einmo nearly sneers on “No Ordinary Caveman,” the first single from Head Like A Kite’s second album, There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere. Almost, but his mordant Robyn Hitchcock monotone keeps an impudent Alfred Hitchcock politesse in the rippling groove of this upstarting, near-one-man-band’s master plan for dealing with his precious OD legacy from ye olde 20th Century: “I do recall I forgot everything I had. Steal it back and get myself on track.” So hold the emo, Eno, Einmo’s own cold play has him (and well-selected musical guests) making notes to self and others through a megaphone, like an old-fashioned lifeguard, or maybe a prison movie tower guard: “Listen, young stunners. Wintertime is over. Face it, young stunners.” Yeah (time for the geezercore reviewer to stake another claim on context), what good are freaked-out, frozen hipster poses now, with the fabled Northwest Passage of petroleum pleasures finally opening up (and fair exchange, “They’ll call us to deliver their land from error’s chain, and it’s all right,” go Junior go!). Although them chill-bones do sound crisp when echoing through Antimc’s Skinny Gold Chain Remix of “Six Bags Of Confetti”(from a new companion EP of re-skewed album tracks). It’s a song sung, with a pail full of Cerulean blue (and “your sister’s, med-i, kay-y, -shun”), by the kind of too-cool school chum you should never, ever invite home (well, maybe once…).
Mostly, Diamond Dave settles for impossible advice to the mirror (“Look yourself in the eyes, but never in the face”), and other sanity-preserving tweaks of perspective, such as recruiting young Aaya Smoosh to exhort us like a re-sparked Björk out of “waiting in the back rows,” to go hurtling further into the paradox-powered, outward bound “Daydream Vacation” (which a male speaker records as having occurred in 1970—it’s still happening though, baby! Especially on Boom Bip’s Homecoming Remix). Mostly though, we’re invited to view this foggy, possibly melting pleasure dome of iPod party pee-pull through the glass onion of hovering/inhaled Sgt. Pepper-ish strings, horns, headlines, shopping lists and skidmarks. Efficient use is also made of klanking, klassically Kinksy riffs and Cure quivers, sprinkled with sufficiently humorous, somewhat Steinski-esque vinyl samples and surface noise, disappearing/reappearing smirks ’n’ nerves.
A little too thin and zippy sometimes, but the title song begins with kiddie giggles sliced and diced by the sidewalk vendor, as false memories begin once again to download, of Christmas morning bringing BBC greetings, somewhere around the time of the Battle of Britain, but not too close. Cloudy sounds curve and dilate, eye of the storm blinks open, crinkles benevolently, as stalwart Uncle Announcer reports, “There is loud laughter everywhere.” He’s so professional that his enunciation is post-British, and cadence must not, cannot be broken, as he faithfully and hopefully continues: “I almost. Feel like laughing myself.” But there are also little herky-jerky variations (tape-decay?) under the steady fishtail turn of strings, which settle into a sardine sandwich with a koto spread. This might be w-a-ay after the Battle of Britain, hopefully after V-J Day—but never fear, “There is loud laughter everywhere from those above and below.” Vocal and other samples recur as the fog regathers around the passing patrol or parade. “Be the light. In anything you please.” Does he actually say that at the end, almost drowned out? The second sentence at least, and that’s enough of a tidbit right now, HLAK and I feel sure (we’ll get what we can take). - Paper Thin Walls |
