Within every contemporary record reviewer lies the knee-jerk critical impulse to articulate and describe via contextualization: to frantically establish a massive, webby paradigm of music past, present, and future, and then to neatly (and accurately) place each CD sitting in his/her respective stack within that ridiculous, elaborate map. Here's the thing: most of the time, the Lilys sound an awful lot like the late-60s, mod-rocking Kinks. Frontman Kurt Heasley has channeled Ray Davies so expertly that it's impossible not to half-expect the guy to bust out "Lola" every time a new track opens. Heasley sings with a distinctly fey Brit clip, despite hailing from less-than-Cockney Philadelphia, and he and 1969-Davies even sport the same suit and haircut. Self-parody? Blind idol worship? Preemptively striking at critics?
There are a handful of other folk-pop-psychedelic influences (from the Beatles to My Bloody Valentine to The Apples in Stereo) evident in the Lilys' electro-acoustic buzz, although, ultimately, context proves stoically unimportant. The Lilys' slot in the ever-growing matrix of recorded music is, happily, very much their own, and Precollection, the band's eighth full-length, is far from being blatantly derivative or embarrassingly footnoted. For the most part, the Lilys' melodic strumming and driving percussion is addictively palatable and, occasionally, surprisingly innovative.
Heasley is the sound-defining double helix of the Lilys, and the peripheral players rotate from album to album, almost incidentally. Precollection sees Heasley drawing from his own varied discography nearly as extensively as he draws from his record collection, and many of the tracks here reflect and refine past experiments, now imbued with a new sense of coherency and artistic vision. "Perception Room" weds Heasley's early-90s fascination with meandering, shoegazing space rock to his poppier sensibilities, and the result is dark, rhythm-heavy, and shiftily melodic, a song that would have been startlingly comfortable on late-80s college rock radio, alongside cuts by R.E.M. and the Church.
"Meditations on Speed" is a muscular tangle of acoustic strums and electric fuzz, quiet, occasionally inaudible vocals (Heasley sheds his Davies skin when he hops into higher registers, but the resulting whine can be difficult to discern over this track's throb-throb bass) and merry, driving organ. Like almost every song on Precollection, "Meditations" is held together by an incessant, uncompromising rhythmic assault; there very few holes, gaps, or pauses for breath. Silence plays a minimal role (at best) and if these songs had been less skillfully assembled, they might seem impenetrably thick. But Heasley's grown into an expert songsmith, and although not all of Precollection's ten tracks are wholly distinct, each does offer something unique for your time: an unexpected drumbeat, a lone guitar wail, an oddly timed burst of vocals.
Precollection's title track (and opener) sees Heasley suggesting, convincingly, to "become what you are." It's an especially apt new beginning for a musician finally working out his ambitions and channeling them into something both resonant and entirely coherent. Achieved nearly ten years after the band's inception, this is a bright start for Heasley's Lilys.
