Album Reviews

Ed. note: Bishop Allen's new album is set to release March, 2009. This review of the group's debut album ran here December, 2007. It gets better with each play and is highly recommended.

This pleasingly tuneful, remarkably earnest and exceedingly smart record of musical Americana from the duo of Justin Rice and Christian Rice A/K/A Bishop Allen (a Cambridge, MA street where they once lived) hints that the two grew up in the presence of a good record collection.

That’s what it sounds like, based on the musical influences to be found lurking just below the surface of many of these well-constructed, thoughtful and oh-so catchy tunes. Another giveaway are the spacious, spare and colorful arrangements and the orderly production values. The two get help from a group of talented friends on drums/percussion, horns, keyboards and strings.

In an age of post-rock cynicism, these guys come on utterly un-ironic like a modern day Simon and Garfunkel. Check out “The Chinatown Bus,” and you’ll hear “The Boxer,” but don’t expect Roy Halee’s majestic production. However, given how vile most things sound these days, this will sound opulent.

The “you can’t get it out of your mind” “Click, Click, Click, Click” has made its way into a Kodak commercial and good for the duo, given that commercials today feature better music than you’ll hear on the radio.

Listen to “Flight 180” with its catchy hook of “If you feel like dancing, dance with me,” and perhaps you’ll hear Bowie’s “Five Years,” though I don’t think that was in their consciousness when they wrote it.

Will Oldham’s seeming influence can be heard throughout, in the vocal performances and in the overall just plain goodness that seeps from the grooves of a record that’s a throwback to another time yet hopefully one that can move music back to higher ground.

Side two’s opener, the utterly charming “Butterfly Nets” (with innocent vocals by the honey-voiced Darbie Nowatka) will disarm you completely, while the resolute “Shrinking Violet,” filled with solid virtues and a chord progression familiar (coincidence, I’m sure) to lovers of Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach”) will have leave you filled with optimism. “Corazon,” a song seemingly about a discarded piano, is really about rebirth, renewal and the rewards of cooperative efforts.

These folky rockers have produced a short, sweet album with not a dud among the twelve tunes, all of which are smartly arranged and delivered with great spirit and wholesome passion.

Though the duo is currently based in Brooklyn, NY, the record was made at Blackwatch Studios in Norman, Oklahoma, of all places, and let me tell you, the engineers, mixer and original mastering engineer knew what they were doing. The result is a recording that sounds far better than the minimal amount of scratch that I’m sure it cost to make.

Kevin Gray cut the lacquers at AcousTech from, he tells me, a CD-R. Now, given that, why should you buy the vinyl? For one thing, Kevin’s DAC may very well be better than the one in your CD player. For another, he probably uploaded the contents to a hard drive, which usually improves the sound and finally, for whatever reasons, turning the bits into a lacquer does something that when played back on your turntable, creates a happy sound. Plus you show your support for the band and the label, which took the trouble to issue it in a nicely packaged set (designed by singer Nowatka), and included a coupon for an MP3 download for your iPod.

This record may not change the world, but it will change your mood, and for the better, that much I can promise, plus it sounds really good. I’ve been playing it repeatedly for weeks and it’s not let me down yet.

What's going on in Bloomington, Indiana? It's the home of Secretly Canadian Records. Dead Oceans is a division of that label. They're onto something.