|
In Mark Lewisohn's Beatlephile Bible, The Beatles Recording Sessions, Lewisohn details how that band, after the momentous meeting with Peter Fonda, becomes obsessed with altering sound. Every noise recorded had to be messed with in some way: varispeeded, reversed, flanged, mic'd in extremely unconventional ways (the horns on "Savoy Truffle" had mics shoved way down inside their bells) - even the performances themselves were manipulated to achieve new sounds (John Lennon recorded some vocals flat on his back). All the Beatles trivia is distinctly relevant in the case of the Olivia Tremor Control, since the band quite clearly revels in altering sound and striving for a wholly original sonic pallette. Unlike any number of Beatles copyists (some of whose music I like very much), OTC doesn't merely try to write songs that might have beenRubber Soul outtakes. Instead, it's as if they, Method Actor-like, try to become the Beatles circa 1966 - not only the songwriting, but the arranging and recording tries not to sound like the Beatles, but to do what the Beatles were doing then: sound like no one else. Okay, if you told me Will Hart, Bill Doss and company had never heard a Beatles record in their life, I simply wouldn't believe you. And if you believed it, there's a bridge I want to sell you - and how about this prime Florida swampland? Still, influence is inevitable; what counts is what one does with it. And what the Olivia Tremor Control do with influence here is produce a hugely ambitious, sprawling record that, well, sounds like no one else. There appear to be twenty-seven tracks on this CD, but many are mere micro-tracks like "The Sky Is a Harpsichord Canvas," whose title takes longer to pronounce than the song's four-second length. There are several episodes of pointillist tape-effect musique concrete, sounding like the swirling cosmic debris on Frank Zappa albums like Lumpy Gravy (or Zappa's own hero, the composer Edgard Varèse), the hugely overdriven organ on "I Have Been Floated," or the slight change in intonation from the first, false start to "Paranormal Echoes" to its actual beginning a few seconds later...well, I could describe all of this Headphone College stuff forever, but its abstract, head-spinning pleasures would diminish were it not attached to a solid core of unstoppable, actual songs. In other words, one reason this record is so hugely ambitious is that the Olivia Tremor Control try to excel not just in sound, but in songwriting and overall conception as well. The mark of their success is that Black Foliage can be appreciated at any number of levels; that is, I suspect it will continue to raise interest over time, while more mono-dimensional records, once more or less committed to memory, sometimes seem to fade and become practically inaudible for all the interest they maintain. If nothing else, OTC - and the other standout members of the whole Elephant 6 crew, Neutral Milk Hotel and the Apples in Stereo - deserve praise for reanimating the recording process, refusing to accept sterile studio gloss or faux-authentic "lo-fi" as the only recording alternatives. They also transcend the mentality that attempts to pretend the studio is a club and dictates recording live, but which also somehow restricts the actual music under the Law of Keep It Simple Stupid. Somehow, they've become sonic alchemists who admix ambition with accessibility, and studio craft with an amateur's sense of freshness and experimentation. |
