| Pedro is James Rutledge and his records. He keeps playing them together ’til they stack up right, and then fall over, and then go sailing away, curving back into and through some mighty (and) curious shapes, if you could only connect the dots. You can, actually: Here, hearing is believing, but we’ll try to transcribe - unless you want to settle for, “Ah yes, a bit like his friend Four Tet.” Ah yes, where you keep walking boldly, because even the shadows seem blue and gold on such a day, turning corners whiter and sharper than bone, and the air is nice. But in Pedro’s case, such invigoration seems to lead to a wedding party in a low-gravity environment: Oh, the guests are settling down, the festivities are mellow, but the pillows keep rising just a little, and on the title track, you might be awakened by a naked bridesmaid playing piano exercises on goosebumps exclusively. Eyelashes flutter around sleepcrusts, as a free-jazz kazoo points the way to curtains flung open where windows must be, so greet skyscrapers swaying back like pitchers do to strike you out, but this time they disappear (not too soon; Pedro keeps you on your toes). But that’s the title track, basically (typically atypical in the way it conjugates and permeates the album’s shared feeling and components). Tiny interludes, dents in “Green Apples,” “Red Apples,” “Lung” and others, only add to the momentum of development, keep them rolling rolling rolling. Loops recur like call and response and also like smashed guests wandering through the walls one more time. (Oh: They are the walls. Never mind.) On “Vitamins,” doorbell static reappears in flickering boutonnières, zigzagging down the vibrating hills of Denver, where it’s really high and dry, so soon enough, ringing ribs of rhythm breathe in and out, in and out, expelling clouds of dandelion wine, while the moon-y sun says it isn’t so. (Sidewise hi-hat keeps clearing its throat, though.) Flippers clap smartly through voices (which are unusual on this album, though Pedro plays well with voices in the remixes posted on his MySpace page: ones of Dntel featuring Grizzly Bear, Longcut, even Bloc Party’s blockheaded lugubroo). Voices of kids, so you might say, “Ugh,” but they sing with horns a little (he does like his horns, free in key, whatever that might be), and flutter their lips like shutters, like kids (no phonetically rehearsed inspirational verse). Then they shut up, and go play in traffic (vibrations trying to spit out, “Good e-e-e, Good e-e-e…”; tumbleweed strings; “Wipe Out,” etc.). Listen only on good-ass headphones, bass up. - Paper Thin Walls |
