Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Featured Album
Gospel harmonies meet wide-eyed psych folk wonder...on a multi-colored school bus.
Edward Sharpe is the alter ego of Alex Ebert, former Ima Robot front-man, who has seen God — or something similarly uplifting — and metamorphosed into a bearded, robed, faux messiah. He's surrounded himself with a flock of disciples who seem equally keen to plough through the doors of perception by means of sheer willpower. Nominally LA-based, Sharpe and the Zeros, inspired by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, have been touring the States in a multi-coloured school bus. They sing, clap and testify to the joys of being, with the gospel harmonies of the Edwin Hawkins Singers and the psych-folk wide-eyed wonder of the Polyphonic Spree.
All of which might be a tad irritating and shrill were it not for the fact that, beneath the surface of cosmic glee, there lurk songs of real power, depth and sometimes darkness. The arrangements are busy and emotive, and as the album progresses the group offers horn-charged funk rhythms and even a couple of tracks (“Carries On”, “Black Water”) which might be old demos of Roy Orbison songs written for him by U2.
From the euphoric opening surge of “40 Day Dream” — with its Arcade Firing arrangements and witty, mystic lyrics (“She got sunset on her breath/ I inhaled just a little, now I've got no fear of death”) — it's clear that the group doesn't care for small strokes. Sharpe's voice swoops from declamatory prophet to achingly romantic falsetto, and there's barely a second where he's treading water. The record brims with life. “Jade” relaxes into mellow summery folk; elsewhere, there are anguished semi-autobiographical confessionals. “Desert Song” builds, with impeccably-gauged guitar dynamics, into an atmospheric epic. “Come in Please” pulls off the challenging task of name-checking The Catcher In The Rye without stalling its gorgeous blue-eyed soul. And just as the centrepiece “Home” risks tilting over into a zealous parody of a Salvation Army marching tune, Sharpe breaks off to tell his backing vocalist that he fell deeply in love with her when he saw her smoking a cigarette in the back of an ambulance. She seems touched by his candour, and you will be too.
Boasting a beautiful, bright immediacy and a complex, troubled undercurrent, this is one of the most magnificent, multi-layered debuts of the summer.
