Published on Apr 5, 2001
It may be showing my age, or at the very least my yuppieness, to
admit that I discovered a band on NPR rather than in a club or at a
friend’s party, but I stand my ground. Call And Response, by virtue
of their radio appearance (NPR called their album “ingenious”), has
become the fastest selling band in the brief history of Kindercore
Records, a label that is striving to bring a little good
old-fashioned melody back into rock and roll. The question is,
therefore, what is all the hoopla about?
Well, for starters, let’s get one thing straight: whether or not
you’ve heard anything like this before, what this band does is
nothing new. Like much ’90s music, there is a fascination for all
things retro, combined with a “sensibility” that updates the rich
analog sounds of the past. It can take the form of a vintage
synthesizer, a non-distorted guitar, or just a bunch of “ba ba ba”s
or “do do do”s. Bands like Stereolab and the High Llamas have been
doing this for years. But at the very least, Call And Response come
from a good starting point, so they deserve a listen.
The first thing that may strike the listener about this CD as
either odd, cool or frustrating, is that when you hear most of
these songs, they just sound so familiar. It’s as if they’ve taken
their favorite songs from the late ’60s and early ’70s and played
around with the notes just enough so that they’re just beyond
identifiable. They didn’t do a good enough job with this process on
“Colors,” the melody of which bears more than a passing resemblance
to “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but the rest of the disc is a scarily
accurate rendition of what was going on back then, both musically
and lyrically.
The highlights include “I Know You Want Me,” which rides a
driving, bluesy riff into ecstasy, and almost makes you wish it
rocked a little harder. In fact, if you replaced the Farfisa organ
with a rhythm guitar and turned the volume up to 11, it wouldn’t
sound out of place on
Led Zeppelin I. “Rollerskate” features some great vocal
interplay and a cool, jazzy guitar coda. “Blowin’ Bubbles” steals
admirably from early ’90s “shoegazer” bands like My Bloody
Valentine in its simultaneous-male-and-female-singer vibe, but take
it one step further (or rather, back) by adding a bass line
straight out of “Hang On Sloopy.” “Lightbulb” is the most
contemporary sounding track, but is still hard to resist, thanks to
some funk-style guitar, some early ’80s style synthesized clapping,
and the sultry “I’m a lightbulb yeah / and I’m on fire” refrain.
And “Night Flight” manages to include a cello as the lead
instrument at the end without falling flat on its face.
Where Call And Response does fall flat on its face is when they
occasionally run out of original ideas. “Colors,” by delivering
lines like “sitting on the green grass, I know the sky is blue,”
and “The rainbow has so many colors / there is red and yellow and
green / and there’s blue” (as if somehow the blue took a little
extra time to think of?), fails to distinguish between childlike
and childish. Even in the ’60s this would have been pretty darned
pedestrian. And “California Floating in Space” with its
somewhat-psychedelic, country-meets-LSD pedal steel guitar, sounds
like it could have been an America outtake. “Bouncing through a
beach ball lullaby?” Now really. The title of the song, along with
the profound revelation “imaginary place” is repeated ad nauseum.
Of course, if this is all just an attempt to make fun of bands like
America, it’s a pretty funny one, ditto “Colors” for Donovan and
the like, but the problem is that they sound serious. The “do do
do”s and “ba ba ba”s get pretty excessive at times, too.
But in spite of their relative lack of originality, this is
still a pretty good record. If
Call And Response can be said to put any sort of new twist
on retro-pop, it would be the ability to consolidate this sound
into cute little radio-friendly songs; to play rock analogies, Call
And Response could end up being related to Stereloab as the Jam is
to the Sex Pistols, as Paul Simon is to Bob Dylan, or as Jefferson
Airplane is to the Beatles, not the real innovator but still more
than worthwhile to pay attention to. If they stick to their own
talents and lay off the imitations, they may have a chance. Only
time will tell.