Poor Kelley Polar has one hell of an overdetermined bio: classical training at Juilliard, arrangement work for Metro Area (whose label, Environ, put out Polar's debut album), and of course that damned cello, which will forever have the name "Arthur Russell" rustling off lazy reviewers' lips. But wait, it gets better: his older sister is none other than Blevin Blectum, formerly of the incendiary scatolotronica duo Blectum from Blechdom. "It's true," confirms Blectum. "We grew up together in rural environments playing with Legos and listening to Star Wars disco records." Ok, so that's where the disco comes from, not to mention the snap-tight arrangements.
Polar's biggest hurdle, though, is disco: doubly so since he juices up his arrangements with tasteful strings-- they're nothing like Russell's rumbling, one-line arguments, but neither are they Philly's cheesy sweeps-- trebly so since disco's hipster ascendancy in the past half-decade. But it would be a shame to write this off as disco nouveau, or whatever damning with faint categories we'd like to pull off. If you listen with your Italo goggles off, you'll hear uncanny references to Matias Aguayo's recent Kompakt album, for instance-- the refrain "I can't wait 'til you're back here in the dark," from "Tyurangalila", could easily be one of Aguayo's do-ya-think-I'm-sexy-because-I'm-not-sure mantras-- while the hooks jutting through every song's cheek and jowl are as pop as Annie or Mylo. Which is to say that Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens is yet another surprising, ambitious release whose primary intent is the pursuit of songform, all other genre trappings aside.
There's no denying, of course, the very Environ-ness of the album (in part because Polar's string arrangements for Metro Area helped cement the sound), from the sparseness of the compositions-- every sound seems to exist in its own bubble, with soapy friction foaming up when they collide-- to the analog drum machines and bass lines. But other details, from rhythm sounds to spry arpeggios to vocal tics, nod variously to Alter Ego, schaffel, and Erlend Oye's fey delivery. But none of this speaks to the wholeness of Love Songs, which arises in part from the foamed-milk consistency of the thing, and in part from Polar's facility with the line, threading a single morphing idea through chord change after chord change, song after song. Minor becomes major and major turns ostrich-headed just as swiftly, lunging deep into dark soil. Too much music these days (not to mention music criticism) gets hung up on the nouns and adjectives, and forgets to pursue the verbs: on the sparkling cello and oogly bass lines, instead of the means by which they become something other than a collection of patches and sequences, a clever set of memory jogs. That's the beauty of Polar's hanging garden: It's not a Zen arrangement to be appreciated for its static beauty. Every vine's alive, wrangling and untangling, via black holes of recent musical history and the clever now-ness of the best pop, its way clear to sunlight.
