Singer is not just a singer; they’re a band, and Unhistories is their début album. Whether it’s deadly serious or utterly frivolous is something only Singer could tell you; I’m assuming it’s a little of both with nothing from the middle.
Assumptions are risky, though, and that seems to be a big part of the game being played on Unhistories. One thing’s for certain, Singer aren’t aiming to be part of any “scene” that I’m aware of, unless there’s a burgeoning minimalist psychedelic movement currently gestating like bioluminescent mushrooms in some hidden crevice of the world.
But this isn’t your mum and dad’s effects-rich pop psychedelia, oh no. Singer make subtle use of space combined with a sparse simple sound pallette - guitars and bass mostly untreated, plus jazzy frameworks and scattered broken beats from the drums - and it’s the choice of notes that lends Unhistories its trippy edge. These queasy off-kilter riffs and chords and jittery timings, these rattlesnake snares and snap-tension scales … they’re hints of paranoia to harsh out what would otherwise be a pretty mellow buzz, like seeing creeping insects from the corner of your eye.
Quite simply, I’ve never heard anything quite like Unhistories, though I can sense hints of Singer’s musical ancestry; Captain Beefheart is certainly somewhere high up in their family tree. But Beefheart’s full-bore clatter is absent; if The Magic Band were LSD, then Singer are mushrooms – a mellower smoother ride, but still firmly at right angles to reality.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that interpretation is a wasted effort with Unhistories – which may explain the title, come to think of it. Pay attention to the questing doubled voices - one straight, one falsetto, like the angel-and-demon duo that appear over the shoulders of cartoon characters faced with desperate moral dilemmas – pay attention, but expect no wisdom but the contradiction of mutually opposing drives. You can try to decipher Singer’s work, but it runs away from your mind’s questing finger like a blob of mercury; just go with it, man, it’s a ride. Don’t fight the trip.
If you just shut your eyes and let go, Singer will take you across a surprisingly rich landscape that becomes more detailed with each journey through. Unhistories is delightfully unhinged - occasionally sinister, often confusing, but ultimately liberating and defiantly full of fun. Close the curtains, put the cat out and turn the TV off – your headphones are waiting for you.
Related articles:
Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: alternative, psychedelic, Singer, Unhistories
