Notes From Life On The Wire With A Wrecking Ball

We Say...

Review by Philip Sherburne

Capitol K's patched-together sound has always borne certain similarities to the sample-heavy collages of Four Tet and Caribou. Fittingly (and refreshingly), just as those producers have turned their early signatures into something far more eccentric, Capitol K's first album since 2005's Nomad Junk is his strangest yet — and also, possibly, his most rewarding. His music still balances a magpie-like attraction to sampled sonic baubles with original parts recorded in the studio; he's still folding dozens of borrowings from diverse musical vernaculars into a warm, well-insulated sound that's undeniably his. The tracks and titles show both a curious literalism and an impish counterintuiveness: "Go Go Go" has all the boundless energy promised by the title, but it's also remarkably restrained, sounding a bit like an early Cure song played on a Casiotone that's lodged beneath the sofa cushions. "Acid Favela" is just that, a big fat horn riff and drum break cribbed from Brazilian funk carioca and wedded to a gurgling acid bass line — until the bridge, when a glistening rock break genuflects before U2, seemingly without irony. As for "Bomb Bomb," imagine the chorus "Bomb bomb, ricking bomb" sung to the tune of one of Bruce Haack's songs for children; at the other end of the spectrum, "Rocked/Shocked," a bizarre fugue for analog synthesizer and distorted vocals run through dub delay, sounds like a cleaned-up Cabaret Voltaire or Human League. Such shorthand, however, doesn't do justice to the cohesiveness of the set — nor to the songwriting that's gone into standouts like "The Fly" and "Diamond Sky." Notes from a Life may be messy, like any scrapbook. But you'll find its glue sticking to your fingers, and in turn, to everything else you listen to.