Jenny Hoyston's one-woman "band" Paradise Island is less angularly wound than Erase Errata, the jagged San Francisco no-wave group she otherwise fronts. This newer, non-rock free-flow nom de plume ostensibly exists for Hoyston to explore unchartered, unhinged experimentation, but considering Erase Errata's substantially jarring aesthetic, Paradise Island's unadventurous pillaging of obvious tropes is only "experimental" relative to her more widely known band. Much like the additive and unnecessary bleeps and buzzes on the Erase Errata remix record Dancing Machine, Lines Are Infinitely Fine's briefly considered sound nuggets feel like simple ideas augmented, rather than focused finalities.
More detrimental to the project, though, is the lack of joy it evokes. A brief segue: I used to work for a minimalist violin player who was really into island music. He'd play his guitar along to it, or we'd loop a record and make feedback while folks hit steel drums behind us. It was celebratory, full of emotion. We kept our droning luau to ourselves, but tried building a bridge between the discord of the one layer and the lush green expanse of the other.
With these memories in mind, I'm not sure I understand Hoyston's project. Where's paradise here? She plays these middle-of-the-road fragments in the most distanced and perfunctory manner. The record's lack of an interiority reminds me of Raymond Queneau's Exercises In Style, a book that systematically plows through conceits, tense shifts, genres, voices, and of course styles, rewriting the same two-paragraphs 99 times. In a similar way, the twelve tracks on Lines Are Infinitely Fine come off like examples of particular approaches, not real-life compositions. Despite what the overload of dorks with contact mikes might tell you, successful experimental music is more difficult to make than it sounds. If there isn't enough foresight, even the briefest of works can seem like an eternity. This happens too often here.
Lines Are Infinitely Fine isn't horrible: it's aggravatingly undistinguished. I was hoping for a warped summertime glare or an odd re-take on Hawaiian standards, but instead this sounds like the bored outpourings of an underground indie-rock cynic. "Mind Wash"-- the aural equivalent of a slip-n-slide-- sounds like the late-night outcome of someone who just purchased their first delay pedal and still finds it novel to drop words into a mixer, vaguely giddy over the echoey shadows they return. "Sunrise A Spectacle" has a vocal patterning redolent of Tattle Tale, minus the histrionics.
I hate to pull out the tired comparison, but I'm also reminded of Kathleen Hannah's Julie Ruin talking about crochet. "I Came 2 Party" is the requisite, thinly produced faux dance number complete with pitch-shifted voice (the underground's fixation on popular dance music is fine and dandy, but come on, even Pink is more interesting than this). "Try and Leave" somehow reminds me of the haphazard distractions of Smack Dab, a quirky early 90s band fronted by a woman with an insanely twee voice. "Float on a Flower" is one of the more upbeat tracks, a follow-up to "Mind Wash" with its broken balloon CASIO orchestrations.
"Monster Boogie (Outrageous Dance)" originally appeared on the Get Up EP released just a couple of months ago and it's the only track that feels complete with it's alluring, distant vocals. The final untitled composition is a more lethargic version of \x93Deprogram\x94-- also from the Get Up EP; strangely, the one song not included from Get Up is its title track, and it's the best thing Paradise Island's done thus far. The oddly paced ukulele twangs in that one rang out like the the Carter Family caught in a dust storm.
I like the concept. I dig the lushly-penned cover art, the rainbow explosions launching from an ink drawing of Hoyston as butterfly (or dragonfly). Inside the CD is the handwritten statement: "Paradise Island is a real place that you can go to right now," but beyond the artwork, I'm not sure why we'd want to chill there. Hoyston offers slight treasures-- a few worth holding towards the sun, glimmering momentarily-- but for the most her part meandering palette is too empty, creating a geographic cipher hardly worth the visit. I felt stranded.
