| If you're even remotely into music (and unless you've stumbled onto this site after mistyping a search for Splenda recipes, we'll assume that you are), you know that the more or less simultaneous arrival of affordable home recording and increase in the number of one-person bands is far from coincidental. Anyone with the effrontery to misallocate a semester's worth of student loans has the means, if not the talent, to put out an album. The nature of solitary apartment recording being what it is, even the standouts are likely to be saddled with adjectives like "gorgeous", "gentle", "layered" and "whispery"; if the words "subtle" and "electronic" weren't strung together in a majority of bedroom-folk reviews, the world might end. Clue to Kalo is no exception. On sophomore release One Way, It's Every Way, Mark Mitchell emerges, somewhat, from the bedroom ghetto and incorporated a variety of guest players (some of whom join him on stage) -- players of accordion, cello, saxophone and mandolin, to name just a few. However, the album is every bit as gorgeous, gentle, layered, et cetera, as you'd expect from someone who's been compared to Badly Drawn Boy (for the pop) and Elliott Smith (for the whispery vocals). Subtle electronic (shit, we're not going to be responsible for bringing on the Horsemen) accents abound. However, Mitchell shows that he's in touch with his analog side, as organ, tambourine and other hallmarks of musical warmth create a pleasingly cozy vibe. Divisions between laptop and acoustic sounds are unobtrusive; in "Seconds When it's Minutes", the beat could come from a drum machine... or it could be handclaps, squeezed through light distortion. Mitchell is a skilled producer, weaving a tangle of complex melodies and countermelodies, rhythms and accents, into a vibrant tapestry; there's a lot more going on in these songs than you can pick up in one pass. As for the songs themselves, they're slippery little things. Clue to Kalo is unmistakably pop music -- but in a gradually insinuating, rather than aggressively catchy, way. Mitchell pays more attention to timbres than hooks, but structure hasn't been neglected; the tunes slide around unexpected corners and ease into each other so smoothly that you're a minute into the next track before you realize the last one has ended. One Way, It's Every Way should be enjoyed from beginning to end rather than song by song... preferably on a quiet rainy Sunday afternoon, drinking tea and feeling a little bit melancholy... But it avoids any clichés that could be applied to it. - Splendid |
1XLP/Out Of Print