The Lorax speaks for the trees. Who will speak for Theodore Geisel? The rhyme-slinging children's author/illustrator known to millions as Dr. Seuss kept the multimedia licensing of his assorted whozits and wockets pretty well in pocket until close to his death, even hatching a Christmas classic with the animated TV adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. Geisel's widow hasn't been so lucky with her licensing decisions. Although I have to admit I sort of enjoyed "Seussical: The Musical" when I saw it in Boston before all the critic-induced rewrites, and a CGI-animated Horton Hears a Who! hit theaters to solid reviews last spring, it's hard to overlook disasters like Jim Carrey's Grinch or Mike Myers' The Cat in the Hat. Graduation gifts mean the last Seuss book most people get before having kids of their own-- Oh, the Places You'll Go!-- is also one of his unfunniest.
Good news for people who love the good Doctor: Oh, the Places We'll Go, LAKE's K Records debut full-length, should help ease some of the pain caused by Hollywood's Seuss-icides. Not to be confused with German prog-rockers Lake, this Olympia, Wash.-based lo-fi pop collective fill out their ramshackle boy-girl sing-alongs with enough horns, flutes, jazzy guitars, synths, and handclaps for Bartholomew Cubbins-- or at least a groovier Architecture in Helsinki (or a shoe-string budget Free Design). And they do it without lapsing into the kind of overblown naiveté that boring adults sometimes ascribe to kids, but Seuss' best characters-- and his young fans-- always knew was bullshit. Kites are fun. Growing up isn't.
They're the sort of group you'd only find on K, with a rotating lineup that ranges from from three to six members and has included labelmate Karl Blau. You get the picture: guileless vocals, modest recording setups, twee-kid sincerity. Oh, the Places We'll Go has stiff competition among K's recent output, including discs by Blau, Jeremy Jay, the Blow, and the promising Desolation Wilderness. It's not always strong: Despite a piercing lead guitar line and a pulsing outro, "Counting" isn't going to help all good children go to heaven, and speaking of Kingdom Come, you can believe in the jangly piano-pop romance of "Heaven" without finding the song particularly remarkable. Still, LAKE introduce themselves as pop dreamers of an unusually levelheaded kind: "Oh, the places we'll go/ We don't actually know," they acknowledge on deceptively upbeat opener "Oh, the Places" and, a scant 25-plus minutes later, on closing track "Oh, the Places Two". Wherever those places are, it sounds like boy and girl are going there together, but that doesn't make those rudderless moments of early adulthood any less terrifying. LAKE coin an all-too-appropriate adverb: "Disillusionally."
The rest of Oh, the Places We'll Go is divided between faster-paced glee-club soul and trippier, jazzier reveries. The album is at its best on "Blue Ocean Blue", an indie-pop should-be hit that calls out those of us "always looking to obscure the most beautiful bits" while exploring "unexplainable emotions" over brass and cowbell. "Dead Beat" is where LAKE's two sides cohere, showing us sisterhood (not ex-husbands who don't pay child support) as instruments dart between urgent verses and dreamy, splayed-out choruses. It's not Sexy Kids' "Sisters Are Forever", but not everybody cooks up green eggs and ham. More interesting are the thick bass lines (see also K releases by Jeremy Jay or Atlas Sound) and psychedelic-leaning lyrics of "Bad Dream" and "On the Swing". With a South American rhythm and reedy keyboard, "Minor Trip" offers up a truism no one will give you as a graduation present: "Fearing the unknown will keep you down/ But fear of death and dying will keep you trying to live." Is it Shakespeare? Hell no. But I bet it would sound hilarious in anapestic tetrameter.
