Illustration detail from the cover of The Thrill Book of Escapes, September 1937
As much as I like way-off-the-radar bands, it can be hard to keep up with them. If I don't go to their website on a regular basis, their name isn't going to be brought to my attention by any of the major media outlets. That's how I missed out on two years of James Rabbit releases - the Santa Cruz indie-pop band has been a favorite of mine for some time, and I wore out my copy of 2009's Perfect Waves, but I just didn't check in for a while. In the meantime, the unarguably exuberant James Rabbit crew, led by Tyler Martin, released four (!) full length albums. The most recent, Splendor, came out last month, and I'm acquainting myself with this one with the plan of working backward through the albums I missed out on.
The good news is that, four albums on, James Rabbit's charm hasn't diminished. When it comes to kitchen-sink-arrangements-and-pep-club-vocals indie-pop, maturity isn't always a good thing - luckily, James Rabbit is still gleefully mixing genres and piling pop hooks on top of each other with Splendor. Elements of funk, reggae, soul, and hard rock carom off of each other on the album's longer tracks like the title track "Splendor!" and the synth-fest closer "Spectrum Blue" in a messy way, but each track has at least a few memorable, singalong moments. And the shorter songs focus on one of Martin's many influences to good effect - "Winter From Now On" is homemade doo-wop, and "Dancing on the Water" is melodic, early '80s power-pop. My favorite track is probably "XSOS", which splits the difference between the sprawling longer tracks and the focused shorter ones, with acoustic folk morphing into a Sign-o-the-Times jam and back again before ending with a big baroque-pop finale.
"XSOS" by James Rabbit
2 comments:
if you're working your way backwards from Splendor to Perfect Waves, don't miss Cactuses. Then hit up Allies and Cyclorama.
I've actually been listening to Cactuses and Snowblind a lot lately - they're already two of my favorites. The party/road-trip vibe and horns on Cactuses are great, and the keyboards on Snowblind are pretty great too. Cyclorama is up next!
Post a Comment