| Remember when the British press were trying to sell us on the genre tag "folktronica?" London's James Rutledge, aka Pedro, surely does, although with You, Me & Everyone, he's trying hard to forget, and to make sure we do, too. His self-titled 2003 debut marked him, along with instrumental glitchers like Four Tet and Manitoba, as a folktronica standard-bearer. But a good litmus test for the validity of a genre is whether musicians use it to self-identify or the press uses it to compartmentalize musicians they don't know where else to put. Terms like "rock" and "punk" stand up as viable cultural movements according to this standard; "folktronica," like "IDM," does not. So what's the reluctant avatar of a shaky genre to do? Simple: Make an album that eschews the sprightly minimalism associated with it. You could make up all kinds of "tronicas" to describe You, Me & Everyone (Miranda Julytronica?), but "folk" is not among them. It's not as if Pedro has started from scratch. His palette (jazz breaks, orchestral samples, carefully tooled synths, instrumental hip-hop drum programming) and his process (control-C, control-V, paint the loop, insert meticulously disordered sections, repeat as necessary) are the same as ever. What's changed is his tone - he's traded in restraint for unchecked bombast. You can forget about breezy flute melodies and judicious glockenspiel sweeps; on You, Me & Everyone, Pedro is going for something more assertive and hyper. His compositions have dense, compact foundations with swarming upper tiers, and while the music is busy, the sound separation is crystal clear. Most of all, there's a sense of boundless reach: Each loop seems to barrel toward the next, and the intensity ramps up accordingly, at least until the inevitable moment when it all collapses into an unruly pile of free jazz drumming and intricately kinked sound effects. This sense of inevitability is the album's handicap - it implies that, to an extent, Pedro is playing it safe. He relies a bit too heavily on other unimaginative tricks as well, most notably the reversed rhythm or melody loop. That always-cool but rather tired suction sound works best on the aptly titled "Spools", which winds around and around like an Irish reel, but elsewhere, it stands out as too glaring a reminder of the circumscribed nature of Pedro's tools. This really isn't his fault - the advent of cheap and accessible digital editing software has made listening to this kind of music like going to a magic show where you know how to do all the tricks - but it's a modern reality that electronic composers of the loop-based stripe have to work a bit harder than before to preserve a sense of mystery. Elsewhere, Pedro does a better job of keeping our interest focused on his compositions, not their seams, by injecting his templates with a compelling variety of colors and tones. "I Am Keeping Up" sends steel percussion, a thin-sliced synth skitter, blocky drums, lyrical horn passages, and a maniacally looping glissando skipping like stones across a pond, with an accelerating staccato momentum. "Hallelujah" sounds like a reconciliation of jazz-hop and G-funk, with little stutters and trills loosening up its taut creep, a lovely chiming breakdown in the middle (it's a nice change of pace from Pedro's usually-chaotic bridges), bonkers drumline programming near the end. "There Will Always Be More" also achieves a pleasing juxtaposition, as a squealing synth phrase tangos with a cool one around the splashy drums. "Lung" is gritty death-drive disco replete with forlorn horns, curly synth ribbons, clip-clopping drums, and mean bursts of high-desert guitar. If the album's structural homogeneity is its weakness, its sonic variety is its strength. Pedro could correct the former on his next album simply by not telegraphing his passes so blatantly, but even with this one, it's already like folktronica never hap - oh, wait. It didn't. - Pitchfork |
