Yes, summer 2006 is the summer of Snakes on a Plane. But it's also the season of the "art-house monster movie"-- at least in the words of The Wall Street Journal (I know!). Among the latest snob-spookers: South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's The Host, Thai duo Oxide and Danny Pang's Re-Cycle, and The Exorcist guy's fresh Harry Connick Jr./Ashley Judd creep-out, Bug. All picked up Cannes plaudits, though probably fewer than Al Gore.
It's also "the summer of Sound Team"-- at least in the words of one media outlet. As blog memes go, praise for the Austin sextet isn't as ubiquitous as your aforementioned forthcoming herpetological thriller, but in Hype Machine circles it's not that far off. As with the new arty fright flicks, Sound Team's first proper full-length Movie Monster tries hard to straddle between blockbuster and cult classic, flashing a dizzying array of instant-cred reference points like so much major-label bling and piling on rube-dazzling special effects. Most popcorn-thriller misfires lack the plot and character to match their sound and fury; Movie Monster's adenoidal overemoting and Wall-of-the-Edge guitars can't hide a shortage of, like, actual decent songs.
To be sure, Movie Monster has plenty to offer Next Big Thing-spotters. Like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last year, Sound Team open things with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it song fragment, though their "Get Out" is more U2 anthem-- particularly "With or Without You"-- than CYHSY carny busk. Just as Tapes 'n Tapes endearingly name-checked Harvard Square on this year's The Loon, Sound Team drop in another real-life locale, Portland's Burnside Ave., amid the Wilco-esque Americana of organ-driven single "Back in Town". Then there's the hipster roll call of influences: Stereolab and Low-era Bowie (and thus Krautrock motorik) throughout, plus Loveless shimmer on "Afterglow Years", Gang of Rapturous Franz disco-punk on marble-mouthed "TV Torso", and singer/guitarist Matt Oliver's strangled Walkmen/Creed croak. Yes, they opened for Arcade Fire in Central Park. But Win was only returning a favor.
Amid blurry soundscapes produced by Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead), Sound Team hack together Yankee Kid A Foxtrot nonsense lyrics and the kind of vague melodies sure to leave you humming the video. "All of the bedrooms fold into the Perfect Chair", Oliver repeats between Police-tinged verses on "Born to Please". Meanwhile, "Your Eyes Are Liars" is pretty much garden-variety post-Elefant 1980s nostalgia, substituting hoarse bravado for Mozzy croon. Extra points for working both Kafka and Trinitrons into the big, desolate "No More Birthdays". Finally, the ringing drone of lofty closer "Handful of Billions" unveils the Bono-sized ambitions lurking beneath the album's more fashionable style-shifting. "Let the backlash begin," Oliver tries elsewhere, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's going to be a long summer.
For all the cinematic sonic touches, Sound Team's eponymous "monster" is, like Sasquatch, pretty hard to follow. At last, on the sinister, electronics-laden title track, with ghostly harmonies out of a subpar TV on the Radio outtake, Oliver screamo-wails that "the movie monster was mechanical"-- and he could easily be describing his band's rote reiteration of snazzy influences. Sometimes you meet the monster, and it is you. And sometimes there are motha-fuckin' snakes on this motha-fuckin' plane.
