Rollerball - Real Hair
(Silber)
This Portland, Oregon sectet's ninth album (and first for Silber) begins with a page out of Godspeed You Black Emperor's songbook; a majesterial yet mournful brass introduction courtesy of Madame DeLeon (trumpet) and Amanda Mason Wiles (sax). "Girls Hugging Trees" then builds on that motif to a rollicking, carnival finale. "66 Deadhead Spies" is as ominous as its title suggests, as DeLeaon and Mae Starr's frightened, quivering vocals weave around Starr's syncopated piano lines and appropriately spooky synths (Gilles), loops (DeLeon) and samples (producer Randall Dunn). What exactly these 66 Deadheads are spying on is unclear, but the musical shaggy-dog journey is a fun listen nevertheless!
The circus-like atmosphere continues on "Starling," where the album's scary/funny boundaries are pushed over the limit with wild singing (typical lyric: "I forgot the taste of cold sanitized steel") over a jolly-good-time hoedown. The cacophonous "Mike's Hind" will bring a smile to all you V. Majestic fans out there—a band whose devil-may-care attitude and kitsch-en sync-opated approach often results in bringing everything, including trumpets, saxes, accordions, clarinets, synths, samples and tape loops to the party and who, along with The Residents, is the obvious point of reference here.
"Hecho En" is where the album starts to lose me, as the remainder of the disk piles one layer of musical schizophrenia on top of the other. This one begins as a straight pop song, morphs into a wild accordion-led polka, and flitters out in a hazy maze of synths, loops, sound effects, and distorted voices; "Spine Delay" is nothing more than shouting, bellowing, pseudo-rap nonsense and Chinese fire drill atmospherics, which are too maniacally over-the-top to make much sense, including a Residents-on-'ludes slow-motion chorus and Gilles' ferocious drumming which threatens to bury the whole enchilada in a barrage of hailstones.
By the time we reach "Bara," all melody and song structure has been vacated to the four winds, and it's time for every man, woman, and child that isn't a Residents, Einsturzende Neubauten, V. Majestic, and Olivia Tremor Control fanatic to abandon ship (and all hope of getting a good night's sleep). Quirky, avant garde, and surreal, Real Hair is certainly an acquired taste that often makes Beefheart sound like Moz(he)art, and you may want to sample before you buy. Best appreciated by fans of the above, as well as the more outré artists on the Silber roster such as Origama Arktika, Clang Quartet, Rivulets, Kobi and Max Soren.
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