The debut album by Gallic pop-dub-electro hybrid Get Back Guinozzi! follows in an increasingly long list of records made via pen-pal collaboration. But unlike the most famous example of this phenomenon-- the Postal Service's Give Up-- the story of Carpet Madness' creation (short version: London-based French singer Eglantine Gouzy and South of France resident and instrumentalist Fred Landini exchanged tracks across the English channel via the Internet) is inaudible in its execution. These songs, delivered chirpily in Gouzy's charmingly butchered English, don't sound like the product of loneliness, estrangement, or longing, and in fact, the experimental brio of their creators makes them seem like the casually tossed off results of hours spent goofing off together in the studio-- even if the duo was separated by more than 600 miles the whole time.
Get Back Guinozzi!'s quirky aesthetic mines the coquettish 1960s pop vibe of yé-yé, the hollow drum machine precision and melodic bass throb of UK post-punk and dub, and the syncopated rhythms of reggae, and tropicalia to create a deliberately lo-fi result that fuses the homegrown and the exotic. But despite such worldly appearances, there is a deliberate naivety to the songs on Carpet Madness. "Go Back to School" is marked by overdubbed vocals that sound like a children's choir, before girlish giggling punctuates its final minute. Their standout cover of Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" is sung in such a sweetly effervescent coo that it makes you wonder if Gouzy understands that the English-language lyrics are about police brutality. And "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" is a ballad in a sea of uptempo tracks that opens with an unusually vulnerable vocal and a repetitive, twinkly guitar riff.
Though there is something to like about each of the giddily scattershot tracks on the album, they have a tendency to meander, either eschewing a conventional chorus and/or hook or developing one only to repeat it ad nauseum. But since Get Back Guinozzi! have no regard for genre conventions, restraint, or indie rock's self-seriousness, they are easily forgiven for such kookiness. After all, there is something delightfully gluttonous about them; they want to pursue every impulse they have and squeeze as many influences as possible into a barely three-minute pop song. And throughout it all, Gouzy sings like a Gallic crossbreed of Yoko Ono and Björk-- she is a mess of shrieky ululations and mush-mouthed pronunciation. Though that probably sounds like it would be annoying (and honestly, it can be at times), it is mostly fascinating, adding another layer of drama to tracks that are already bursting at their home-sewn seams with theatricality.
Carpet Madness sounds like it was well served by the long-distance that created it. It has an audible try-anything-once spirit that is clearly a result of two friends trying to amuse each other from across La Manche without fear of reproach for being too weird. And as a fantastical, playful collection with many stamps on its musical passport, Carpet Madness is all the better for letting its freak flag fly.
