You know, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the wackiness of the pun in this album's title and artwork. For those of you new to this whole "Internet" thing, a googler is a desk jockey who's become so adept at finding idiosyncratic (and sometimes even relevant) things on the Net's finest search engine that they actually warrant a title. In a broader sense, I suppose we're all Googlers when we use the search engine, but the term is best applied to the true masters-- and arguably, a sort of backhanded compliment.
Googler is the second album from the Louisville, Kentucky-based Parlour, headed up by Tim Furnish (Crain, Cerebellum, Aerial M). I suppose the fact that there's an album titled after this Information Age piece of verbiage means the term is here to stay, at least until the site it got its name from is superceded by something better. But what to make of the cover art? In case you're straining into the GIF at the top of the page, that's a big cloud of googly eyes on a yellow background adorning the cover. The CD itself is decorated with a massive googly eye, and they dominate all of the other artwork as well. I can only imagine the possibilities for a vinyl release-- you know those things would be real, functioning googly eyes if this were an LP. Bottom line: what a fucking terrible pun.
Parlour's quota for humor (or perhaps humour) seems to be filled by album titles and artwork, though, as this and their debut, Octopus Off Broadway, attest. That record was bursting with texture, but completely undernourished melodically, and as such, was pleasant but not very fulfilling. This new album signals a different sound and direction for the band, rearranging all the elements, and entirely for the better. They still couldn't find a melody if they were living next door to it, but the textures that were so obviously their forte on the debut are infinitely more engrossing and varied here.
What's odd about this is that these songs were all recorded over a period of several years beginning in 1997-- the same period of recording that yielded Octopus Off Broadway-- indicating that the band was more fully formed in their early days than that record let on. Googler sounds like a genuine progression, but if it's actually concurrent with their other material, it makes you wonder where this band might be headed-- an open question for the moment, it seems.
Things get off to a somewhat familiar start with "Jololinine", which nods to previous Parlour material with its slow build and heavy layering of buzzing organs, electronic programming and clean guitars, but all bets are off when "Distractor" kicks in with its twitchy drums and splattered, dissonant guitar chords. The shifts in tension, weird rubbery breakdown and action/reaction structure are more than enough to make up for the lack of melodic focus, and the song stands as the best thing Parlour have put their name on yet. "Over the Under" is almost as good, riding a groove built to last and building slowly to a wah-soaked climax that toes a strange line between math and funk.
"Regulkfro Reel" acts as a turning point for the album, transforming at its midpoint from a wildly askew stack of riffs and drums to a series of ambient washes that pulse like Stars of the Lid. The band places little quasi-melodic keyboard flourishes in the glow on an almost subliminal level, setting you up for the echoing chamber of keys and rounded-off sounds that comprises "Hop Pife". "Hop Pife" conjures a space filled with fluid, like a womb, but not quite as warm or safe, as strange quarter-tone synths enter like slow motion sirens near the halfway point. "Svrendikditement" closes things out with a foot on the post-rock and another wandering the world of static-fringed glitch, building on a basic, programmed tribal rhythm and some marimba-ish timbres, and winding up with a crunchy, noise-tainted concoction brimming with brain-grabbing sounds.
Strange, then, that this was recorded at the same time as Parlour's debut-- because it sounds nothing like the other record, instead coming across as a leap and a bound forward toward something entirely more interesting and bracing. Parlour still aren't grabbing me with melody the way I want them to, but maybe that's just not the point for them. And anyway, with Googler, they've proven that they can be genuinely engaging without much assistance from melody, which is impressive enough in itself.
