Like many of K Records' recent releases, Little Wings' sixth album, Magic Wand, brings to mind the common image of the label's entire roster uniting around a bonfire, or heading out for some kind of musical picnic, with a four-track recorder along to capture the event. By now, these types of releases are expected several times a year from the label, with one caveat: The communal nature of these all-for-one projects consistently traps too many ideas in too tight a space.
Though certain K artists have been able to combine each member's contributions into a cohesive, visionary whole (The Microphones, Yume Bitsu), most have been unable to straddle the line between preserving tight-knit relationships with fellow "family" members and creating a piece of work that stands alone. And while Kyle Field fares better than most on his sixth album as Little Wings, the K aesthetic still detracts. At their heart, these youthful folk songs are spare and gentle, but frequently, multiple instruments are stacked atop them, and their clamor cuts into the songs' simplistic intentions. "Sing Wide", for example, lopes along a static-laced bassline and stark acoustic guitar part before the sound of shaky, lunatic-fringe background voices overrides its jailed boom and distracts from the track's aspiring message.
Elsewhere, "Uncle Kyle Says" fails in its attempt at bemused charm and winds up corny and unhinged. Limber with Field's sandman lessons to his nieces and nephews, its overwrought cuteness has the effect of studio downtime committed to tape. All ramshackle frolic and are-we-rolling spontaneity, the song breaks apart the restful ease of the songs placed around it. You can practically hear the K collective urging Field to leave it on the album, half-lark and misplaced signifier.
Yet, when Field manages to sneak off into the woods and shed himself of his labelmates, his basic folk arrangements rival the best of field-bedded acts like Iron & Wine and Vetiver. Opener "Everybody" could smooth the scar tissue of the most hardened cynic; its campfire acoustic guitars crackle under Field's voice, easing listeners into the album with its clean, immediate warmth. "So What?" is a lonely piano ballad dissolving at the seams. Sagging with melancholy and spitfire remorse, it continually threatens to fall apart, and acts as a breather at the album's midpoint.
Closer "Darkened Car" circles back to the album's hymnal beginnings. Recorded in a hushed, closeted space, Field strips the song bare to acoustic guitar and one background voice. The ideal endpoint for an album so reliant on evanescence, it's almost a shame there's audible evidence of this recording. Could they only have faded into the empty walls and spider-cracked windows of a foreclosed house, Field's wistful lines, "In a darkened car, you're only who you say you are," might have found symbiotic expression.
With August at full burn, the summer melds into Magic Wand's sunstroke imagery, and its shaded daydream descends to its obvious birthing, issued from stankheat and cicada cries. So, yes, Magic Wand works in favor of summer daze and sweaty distractions. Still, I'll be damned if that's not Dijon on my pant-leg, and we all know how pesky mustard stains can be.
