The Aluminum Group - Pelo
(Hefty)
With Jim O'Rourke driving from the backseat, The Aluminum Group maxed out with
last year's Pedals, a very tasty post-lounge melange of lush Bacharach-like
orchestration and vocals. Fans of The Group may need a few days or half a
carafe before judging The Group's new album, Pelo, as it is almost the
antithesis to Pedals. Replacing O'Rourke with main production duties is
Tortoise and Isotope 217 drummer John Herndon, bringing along with him John
McEntire and most of the rest of Tortoise, creating an album that is much
colder and much more minimal than The Aluminum Group's previous works.
The lush arrangements and instruments that were all over Pedals have been all
but removed in favor of raw electronic pulses and beats. Combining the Navins'
songwriting with this type of sound, naturally, creates something like an easy
listening version of Tortoise, like Giorgio Moroder working with
John Coltrane and Rashied Ali. Such a thing is not bad, per se, especially if you
are a fan of The Group's previous songwriting, and it is solid enough to create
several light, fluffy, soft flowing jams, just enough backbone to carry the
melody and weight of the vocals but no more.
This barer approach permeates into the vocals and lyrics as well. While most
of the songs do include vocals in some places, half of the album is
instrumental. Where as The Aluminum Group forefathers Stereolab can pull off
an album of electronica-based instrumentals, "the gay brothers" Navin struggle,
their music being too tiny and delicate to make up for the vacuum of
space left from removing the vocals. The Group's lyrics also seem purposefully
less complicated, cutting out the winking references to topics like Tess of the
D'Urbervilles and Sharon Tate's murder that made the lyrics to Pedals so
engrossing. In Pelo, the Navins try to be much more universal,
like in the chorus "If You've Got a Lover, You've Got a Life," singing what can
best be described as disco anthems (if disco wasn't all about the dancing).
With the vocals simplified and pruned and the music less orchestrated, much
of what is left is beats. This new found emphasis on bare beats in many ways
is playing to The Aluminum Group's weaknesses instead of their strengths,
opposite to last year's Pedals. In that way, Pelo could be considered a
disappointment in comparison. The band has sacrificed much in order to
produce the barest, simplest form of music possible. In doing this, they are
creating music that exists on almost a subconscious level, never demanding
attention but always lingering somewhere below--perhaps their goal is to
create the ultimate post-club makeout album, a goal they accomplish quite well.
Pelo certainly does not come nearly as close to approximating Bacharach as
Pedals does. Of course, it isn't really trying to; its extreme focus on bare
rhythm and lush vocals makes it sound much more like their take on Antonio
Carlos Jobim. While this may not be the optimal direction for the band, after
the listener gets adjusted to it, it is a successful one.
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