Well, we're not in Illinoise anymore, but it's not for lack of superficial similarities: Like Sufjan Stevens himself, Anathallo hail from Michigan, their turn-ons include Jesus and marching band practice, and they never saw an overly elaborate song title they couldn't preface with a word from a foreign language. Floating World, the septet's first album after a handful of self-released EPs, pegs hushed vocals and everything-under-the-sun arrangements to Japanese folklore. Unfortunately, the result is comically overwrought.
Never less than wildly ambitious, Floating World is lavish enough for simple description to send most old-media typists careening over their word limits: glockenspiels, trumpets, trombones, flugelhorns, chains, harps, cellos, melodicas, bells, Velcro, feedback, "We Will Rock You" bleacher stomps, a cappella-group harmonies, Bible stories, Jeff Buckley balladic calisthenics, Ben Folds piano drama, a quick Rain Dogs-cum-Man Man hobo freakout, Appleseed Cast guitar sprawl, a surfeit of time-signature changes, one track with whirling drums that sound like "Chicago" (or really "Clocks"), and, on modern-classical-informed "The Bruised Reed", plenty of "love, love, love." Adds lead singer Matt Joynt, in choirboy melisma that intermittently froths with emo-kid angst: "See, all things are so bright and spiritual."
Oh, are they? The band's name may be Greek for "to renew", but criticism comes from the Greek krinein, or "to cut," and here on the world wide internet there's plenty of space for saber-baring. Floating World's ostensible centerpiece is the song cycle from caroling, discordant "Hanasakajijii One: The Angry Neighbor" to the, yes, "Chicago"-like "Hanasakajijii Four: A Great Wind, More Ash"-- although naturally, the tracks are out of order and interspersed with the rest of the album. They're based on a Japanese folktale about a dog digging up gold in a neighbor's yard. Typical lyric: "I, of wicked deeds, snarling mouth/ Wandered away, wandered by." Clearly, none of this is Japan's fault.
But as the old saying goes, when you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit-- and Anathallo love clichés, too. "Out of sight, out of mind/ Someone said that to me, someone said that to me"-- but they've clearly taken the former advice to heart. Floating World is little more than a long list of insufferable pretensions that suggest some psychedelic aspirations. Complexity for complexity's sake is lame, and nothing inherently privileges music that tries to bring "higher" arts into plain ol' pop; you could fill shelves and shelves with bad art-rock, jazz-rock or classical-rock. Floating World makes Anathallo the Emerson, Lake & Palmer of fiction-workshop rock: All things go, all things go.
