 The first time I heard 'em on 2000's Do Things I was blown away by the ease with which New Wet Kojak conducted a confounding, inconclusive, almost unclassifiable record that lay somewhere between bedroom eyes, kissing bandits and blaring sirens.
Upon the earliest moments of their new This Is The Glamorous, that same fluid effect prevails; like a slow motion cruise through an empty city street with only the occasional moonlit flicker for guidance. The guitar harmonies, often picked and chordless till the chorus, echo and fade, tilting forward in the forefront before giving ground to a quirky dissonance. Such effects serve as key motivators from the start, and are typical of the glamorous and inglorious atonal moodiness that plays upon the subtle notion of life-affirming pop music played without premise. The tone is amiably catchy, occasionally disturbing and led by a fluid mix of guitar notes, percussion, woodwind, and synthesizers coming together and drifting apart, but never straying far enough to require mid-range support.
The World Of Shampoo and Supermodel Citizens USA offer up jazzy and lush soundscapes at the onset, harmonious and impacting with little effort. Nothing You Can Say is befitting of the romance novelist searching for that perfect mood where a gentle calm precedes the impending lust of two love-starved souls.
The further along, I go the more wonder about the song sequence listed here - the benefit of the booklet free advance CD? We might call this easy listening for the impressionist mind, or we might suggest the unlikely combination of The Psychedelic Furs, Sub Pop, and The Melvins, and start somewhere in the middle for referential purposes.
Save for the few moments where driving tones cross the line of comfort into a head-tilting throwback to post-modern extremes - see Jealous and Reverse The Curse . . . probably - This Is The Glamorous exudes an ambient cool and calm this thematically loose, alert, and elevated flight through incandescence. :: Vinnie Apicella |
