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October 06, 2005
Money rabbits hide under hedge funds
Page France has been getting a lot of attention recently, and rightfully so. Sean StG wrote (eloquently as usual) about them only a couple weeks ago, and Matt from You Ain't No Picasso wrote a great post about the album, and included an interview he did with Michael Lau, the band's singer and main songwriter. "Hello, Dear Wind" is indeed an outstanding album, and probably one of the best I've heard all year. Here are some reasons why:
1)Michael Lau's songs are built on lyrics, driven by beautiful and delicate invocations of types and tokens. Kings and queens, chariots, windy days, dogs, elephants, cherubim, trampolines, beasts, snakes, angels, arms, hands, blue eyes, feathers, stomping feet, and wrecking balls. In certain songs, it's almost as if Lau is handling the objects themselves, taking them carefully out of his pocket and arranging them on a table into a kind of physical formula, like a sentence that can only be expressed in such a concrete grammar.
2)There's an interesting religious element to the album that's sort of difficult to grasp. As Sean mentioned in his post, the song 'Jesus' is not really about the historical or religious Jesus, but about a magical Jesus, who drinks wine and dances and rises from the earth to just basically cut loose and party. There aren't really any explicit mentions of God (except for maybe in the beginning of 'Chariot', when Lau sings about God's heart), but there are a lot of references and ambiguous pronouns that pop up in the songs, a la Sufjan Stevens. But unlike Sufjan, Lau's songs don't hint at just straight-up Christianity- they point more towards a complex and fascinating mixture of Christianity and animism (the aforementioned objects in item #1). Let me muddle this point some more: it's almost as if these things in reality serve as the in-the-world instantiations of God (Jesus, etc.), sort of along the same lines (maybe) as the Romans and their lares and penates.
3)The entire album, from beginning to end, is packed with just ridiculous melodies. Sometimes Lau will be singing, in his airy and slightly nasal voice (a good reference point is the Castanets' Ray Raposa, except Lau has a slightly broader range), and then, as in the middle of 'Chariot', Whitney McGraw will join in with her high, silk-spun vocals, and the whole song just sounds like it could light up a room. At first blush, the instrumentation and arrangements seem simple, but after a couple listens it becomes clear that there are more than a few surprises tucked into the corners of each song (e.g. the wooden thump of a foot-stomped stage, unexpected handclaps, or willowy guitar lines).
Anyway. I'm sure I'm articulating this poorly, so it's probably better if I just point out that you can listen to the whole album right here. "Hello, Dear Wind" is now available for pre-order (and immediate delivery) over on Fall Records. It is a very good album, and if you at all dig 'Junkyard', you should definitely just go ahead and get it ('cause the rest of the album is made up of tracks just as catchy and wonderful).
Posted by Kevin at October 6, 2005 12:34 AM