By musical evolutionary standards, the band rehearsal is a prehistoric notion. Long ago, pop music opened its doors to the world of technological convenience. Now, accoutrements such as synthesizers, drum machines, and ProTools-style manipulators are standard fare for garage studios, and writing music is an increasingly solitary affair. While these devices have in many ways enriched the artform, their advantages have often come at the expense of the synergistic effect of live musicianship. Most regrettable is the loss of the exhilarating energy that can result when a group of people simultaneously know exactly what the fuck they're doing.
Natural Dreamers know what they're doing, and they relish it. The band seeks to revive the floundering state of, well, the band-- that is, "band" as in the instinctual communion of musicians through an ineffable language and, most of all, lots of hard, noisy work. Natural Dreamers sounds like the product of many strenuous nights; one can almost see guitarists Chris Cohen and John Dieterich eyeing each other cautiously as they toil to nail each well-spaced kick, or Jay Pellicci sweating to keep the ship afloat. Miraculously, as if by kismet, the disparate pieces fall in to place, and Natural Dreamers is the sundry result of equal parts fate and painstaking craftsmanship.
Natural Dreamers eschew immediate categorization, but it's helpful to consider that all three members have served time in Deerhoof. Cohen and Dieterich are relentlessly jagged and instantly recognizable. There's still no give to their boxy style of guitar playing. In fact, Natural Dreamers consciously give groove a stiff arm, faring without a bassist or, often enough, time signatures. At its worst, this formula yields instrumental math-rock that never learned its multiplication tables. At best, the band distills the pellucid nectar of melody and offers a refreshing take on pop music, at once retrospective and prescient.
"Singer" tries on several different outfits before finding one that fits. The band steps gingerly into these different guises, considering each new move with Kasparov-like deliberation. When they finally decide where they're headed, their declaration of purpose is brazen and not a little shocking: The timid guitars abruptly meld into a fragmented three-note loop, while Pellicci loosely keeps time, battering his cymbals irreverently and filling leftover space with frenetic snare rolls. From there, the track picks up the record's steadiest rhythmic vamp, a thick shuffle accompanied by a wistful glockenspiel melody. It's a clear standout and a suitable mission statement for a band whose sound isn't easy to pin down. Elsewhere, "The Big Switch" approximates a free-jazz Lightning Bolt, while "The Golden Pond" and "Fourth Man" utilize silence and some analog electronics to an interesting stylistic effect.
If Natural Dreamers is at times unbearably chaotic, it isn't because the record is too strident; paradoxically, it's because some of the songs aren't abrasive enough. There's tons of melody here, often crystalline and strikingly beautiful, only much of it is transmogrified by the band's flighty, abstract style of composition. As such, tracks hint at a transcendent melody, only to not quite grasp it.
But in the end, this penchant for obfuscation is as much of a boon as it is a bane. As they posited with Deerhoof, Cohen, Dieterich and Pellicci seem to believe that the visceral heart of pop music lies not in the way instrumental elements coagulate, but rather in each sound's naked isolation. Much like abstract painters of the 20th century, who used paint as subject matter, they deconstruct and decontextualize traditional form, and as such, Natural Dreamers is a demanding but ultimately enlightening album.
