Dead Man’s Clothes
Apsis
self-released
Click to hear: “Apsis“
From The New Oxford American Dictionary…
apsis n. either of two points on the orbit of a planet or satellite that are nearest to or furthest from the body around which it moves.
That’s as fitting as any title could be for Dead Man’s Clothes’ new album. The odd-pop combo from Portland is hard to pin down. Their songs are alternately jokey and sincere, ethereal and noisy, consistently unpredictable. The band’s core musical beliefs are anyone’s guess.
And they’re great.
Dead Man’s Clothes takes a Weenian approach to putting an album together, mixing almost as many styles as there are songs. The opener, “Phat Ghost,” is a weird and annoyingly catchy jazz-joke. This is followed by “Being Right,” an acoustic barnburner that sounds like a sea shanty on Red Bull and Pop Rocks. Then comes “Build High,” with its spaced-out half-minute intro leading to a moody four minutes of droney-yet-driving indie rock.
The band’s true (?) nature begins to reveal itself come track four, “Etching Impression.” Singer/guitarist/musical-sawist Don Dumont sweetly croons over a strummed acoustic guitar while various electronic flotsam fly through the song’s gorgeous melody. Ah, you realize, this band’s about making beautiful music and messing with it!
The next track, a two-and-a-quarter-minute instrumental called “Are You Sure?,” confirms that thesis, as the foursome piles a variety of noise atop a pretty and haunting guitar-and-keyboard line. And the three songs that follow apply roughly the same formula heard on “Etching”: a lovely melody on vocal and guitar muddied to a greater or lesser extent by electronic noise, electric guitar and/or keyboard tweets.
This approach is most pronounced on the title track. Dumont and guest vocalist Emmy Raviv float through an ethereal guitar line and synth atmosphere during the first two-thirds of the song, and then the bashing begins. Killer.
Not to be too predictable, DMC sandwiches that track between a goofy rocker, “Zombie Love (With You (Till the Breaka’ Dawn))” (note to band: do not release a hard-rockin’ song about zombies in the same town as Covered in Bees (and avoid double parentheses whenever possible)) and the throwaway closer, “With Yourself.”
“Dead Man’s Clothes creates a unique sound that fits comfortably in your senses,” the band’s brief online bio begins. “[L]ike a new friend that feels like you have known them your whole life, and just as mysterious.”
Well put.
— Chris Busby
Dead Man’s Clothes plays a CD release show Fri., May 22, at Empire Dine and Dance, 575 Congress St., Portland, with openers Anna’s Ghost, Johnny Fountain & The Manes, EverySmithEver, and The Dirty Dishes Burlesque Revue, at 9 p.m. Call for cover (21+). 879-8988. For more on the band, visit deadmansclothes.com.
