pastiche (n): 1. a work cobbled together in imitation of several original works. 2. a medley of various ingredients; a hodgepodge, farrago, jumble.
Let's face it: as James Webb Young said "An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements." Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in music, where the litany of genre-hyphen/slashes point to a larger truth: musicians are the sums of their influences. From The Beatles to Animal Collective, musicians are always combining "old elements" into a "new combination"; skillfully done, the resulting concoction feels truly exciting and unique, otherwise... well, see 1 & 2, above.
Ava Luna are a Brooklyn septet that their myspace defines them as "pop/post-punk/electro." Missing from this description are "doo-wop", "funk", "jazz", and "no wave", but maybe they felt too many slashes might be off-putting. Their new EP, Services combines all these disparate elements into a novel urban cocktail, equal parts retro homage and contemporary alchemy. And about half the time, they get it just right.
The most unique part of Ava Luna's sound is the three-part vocal hamonies of Felicia Douglass, Becca Kauffman and Siheun Song; they add an Andrews Sisters-like presence to each of the four songs on the EP, that vary in effectiveness based on the accompaniment. Carlos Hernandez is the maestro here, son of a soul DJ, and with a great blue-eyed soulster's voice, not entirely unlike that other skinny, white genre-masher, Beck Hansen. The interaction between the smooth and the rough generally works to their benefit, like on the standout track "Clips": Hernandez's vocals play off the trio beautifully, setting up a huge, multi-layered hook that kicks in at the half-way mark. Unfortunately this oil and water approach isn't always as successful, as in the EP's opener "Cement Lunch". The track opens with the girls acapella intoning "Please don't go/I need you so" only to be rudely interrupted by industrial/electro clatter that dominates the rest of the song. What's wrong isn't that you can't put these disparate elements together, it's just that... well, you have to put them *together*. Here it just feels like some 50s girl-group collided with some noise ensemble on a street corner, Reese's peanut-butter cup style, but to much less tasty effect. "Won't You Be Mine" suffers a similar fate, with a great initial vocal/percussion interplay, only to be ruined by an unnecessary keyboard outro that makes no attempt to accompany or pay off the vocals to any effect.
I certainly hope Ava Luna will stick around, and keep tinkering with their sound, because when they've got it, they've got it. It's the rest of the time – when you're wondering what that "it" is – that needs some attention.
--written by M@
No comments:
Post a Comment