 |
MH-259 Head Like A Kite - There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere  There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere, Head Like A Kite’s second full-length album, and first for Mush, is an expert blend of electronic rock production and pure pop-songcraft built on a bed of pillaged found-sound from cities the band visited on their 2006 US tour. No stranger to sharing the stage with big names on national and international turf, ringmaster Dave Einmo has assembled some of Seattle’s finest for the album including members of The Long Winters, Smoosh, Radio 4, Crooked Fingers, and Preston School Of Industry. Whether it be guest vocals from Asya Smoosh and Graig Markel, added inspiration from touring drummer Trent Moorman, or the production of Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine) each track is flavored with the perfect additions to the epic songwriting and big-beat electronic production that is Head Like A Kite’s forte. There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere strikes the balance between art and craft and is the finest sonic road-trip in the Mush catalog. |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reviews Summary |
| Possibly the best release out of the Northwest this year - KEXP / A true genre-twisted party album that appropriately captures the sounds of an eclectic America - Urb / The dreamy soundtrack to your imaginary trip into space - The Stranger / Deserves a lot of indie play - Pop Matters / Friskiness is refreshing – AP |
| If this group’s name made you think of “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails, then you wouldn’t be too far off in imagining what they sound like. Head Like a Kite is an experimental group from Seattle who’ve been garnering a bunch of hype behind their LP, There is Loud Laughter Everywhere, and for good reason. This has got to be one of the more audacious releases of 2008, and it’s certainly one of the most listenable in the heap of pseudo-electronica that is modern indie music (all of the sudden). With only one man at the controls, Dave Einmo (who brings his buddy Trent Moorman along on tour for good measure), Nine Inch Nails comparisons are pretty logical. For one thing, these are a bunch of dark synth-riff driven head-nodders that should please most fans of that group; but the atmospheric layering of these tracks, all static-y outro and spacey background hiss, brings to mind more modern acts like Daedelous. But that’s only about 40-50% of the album... Because variety is the name of the game, and truth be told that’s probably why I like this record so much. The sequential order puts the Add N to [X] groove of “Listen Young Stunners” right next “Big FM Radio Hit,” which rocks like some distant relative of Bloc Party (but less trendy and less British). Once you hear the trumpets at the end of that song, that’s when you start to realize this shit is all over the place – in all the right ways. So then, because of the eclectic nature and semi-flow-abandonment, the album has the potential to lose fans of some particular style (or at least the potential to show up more often in Mp3 form than actual album form), but if you’re anything like me and enjoy an album with a multi-faceted personality then you’ve got to listen to it in order from start to finish. In general, the orchestration is pretty simple; there’ll be a steady drumbeat and then some catchy bassline or a synth-line or maybe some piano, nothing overloaded. Head Like a Kite is able to make really big music out of really small instrumentation and a really small lineup. The idea that a dude could just walk into a studio and walk out with this is just something amazing. “Before We Go to Bed” is so haunting, though, that it could totally be the sound of one lonely guy in one dark studio spilling his guts. Now that Nine Inch Nails’ output is solidly hit-or-miss (basically miss whenever Trent Reznor sings), it’s time for awesome groups of this nature to emerge. If there truly is loud laughter everywhere, surely it’s directed at the competition (if there is any to be found). Totally ballsy release (“Big FM Radio Hit” must be a joke?); totally schizophrenic songwriting (the lyric “I stole your sister’s medication” speaks volumes); totally something worth coming back to. Also, be sure to get the version of the album that comes with a bonus disc of remixes. None of them will change your life or anything but they’re definitely worth hearing. - Absolute Punk |
