| Ten is instantly and absolutely beautiful. Even in its soft little acapella intro, Dose's voice is already much softer than ever before. Throughout the record, he and why? bounce off each other's vocal parts and harmonise in a way that is the total opposite of the sporadic, chaotic bouts of lo-fi rap on cLOUDDEAD's first album. The whole thing sounds much more like why? than either Doseone or odd nosdam, though elements of Themselves' post-pop and odd nosdam's spaced-out drone make themselves subtly known. Overall though, Ten is all sweet condensed synthesiser indie, loose dusty drums, surrealist children's music and timeless melodic perfection. The choice to abandon the overt muted moodiness and sunken drone gloom of their previous work in favour of this very saturated pretty, warm production and naive delivery is very strategic. Regressing allows Doseone and why? to be so much more analytical, to get away being morbid, surreal and obsessive without ever depressing their audience, much like why? did on some of the more deceptively cute parts of Hymie's Basement. Lyrically, much of Ten is observational, but processed through the lens of Dose's skewed outlook on, well, everything. The imagery here is a menagerie of animals, a flurry of cardboard cutout famous people, gramophones, weathermen's charts, and a balmy artists colony that is Oakland. Following some great free-form stuff earlier on, Ten feels wonderfully complete. The references it makes to the first record ("Dead Dogs Two" and "Physics of a Unicycle") are updates, points of clarification and closure, as this may well be the last record they will ever make together. But that's fine by me - even if Anticon were to just stop tomorrow. I couldn't hope for a more perfect pop record. - Dot Alt |
1XLP/Out Of Print