While people were waiting anxiously for Merriweather Post Pavilion to leak at end of 2008, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound encouraged people to channel their anticipation into creativity. "My advice to those who are so desperate for AC's album to leak is to pick up instruments and make your own version of what you would want it to sound like," he said on his blog. I think Cox might find a kindred spirit in Toronto's Warren Hildebrand, who records as Foxes in Fiction. Not only was Swung From the Branches initially released only on cassette, but with its narcotized indie pop cast and song titles like "15 Ativan (Song for Erika)", "Operating Room", and "Visiting Hours", it almost seems like Hildebrand was making the follow-up to Logos he couldn't wait for.
If Hildebrand learned anything from Cox, it's that it's good to err on the side of generosity. His MySpace page gives an origin story for every track from Swung From the Branches, and the tape itself is a monster to get through-- 22 tracks, 71 minutes, and sequenced more like a hard drive dump than a cohesive first statement. In fact, for the first 20 minutes, you might think Foxes in Fiction were strictly a drone act. It's all pretty (if undistinguished) major-key swells broken up by crumbled drums redolent of Boards of Canada at their most downtempo ("Coffee Cups That Won't Break Down") and culminating in "8/29/91", a seven-minute backdrop for a rambling Bukowksi soliloquy that is somewhat at odds with what is otherwise an hour of almost exclusively serene sounds.
In a vacuum, the static-laced "Mialectric" wouldn't signify a noise-to-signal transition, but within the context of Branches, it's the first sign of the dreamy, lo-fi looped pop that subtly breaks Branches wide open. At first, the reverence in Hildebrand's more traditionally structured pieces can be tough to overlook-- amongst others, the downy prom nighter "Snow Angels" and "Jimi Bleachball" have near-exact DNA matches in certain Deerhunter and Atlas Sound songs. But while his loops have a certain sonic cohesion, ranging in timbre from hollowed synths to springy guitar, the difference lies in their scale and intent. Both "To Go Home" and "Memory Pools" trigger a hypnotic stasis, but the former feels borne of staring into the sun, the latter at a pinwheel. "New Panic Cure" and "15 Ativan (Song for Erika)" also work as two interpretations of the same idea: both find footing into two chords and Hildebrand's washed-out vocals, but the slow-motion arpeggios make "Cure"'s waltz sound of unsettling sedation, whereas the flickering African guitar figure in "15 Ativan" lends a strange optimism into a story of failed overdose.
But for all of Branches' compositional charms, its main draw is something that almost exists outside of the music. Some feel that information overload has robbed the music-making process of mystery, but do you want artists or magicians? Hildebrand is as transparent as it gets. As a lyricist, he prefers function over poetry, but you can find poetry on his Blogger page as well his own mixtapes filled with songs from the exact type of artists you'd expect (Bibio, Benoît Pioulard). And that's the greatest strength of Branches-- it short-circuits the feeling-out process you're used to from new artists and communicates its creator's view of the world directly. It's not always thrilling, but it's consistently absorbing, and for over an hour, you really do get an idea of what's going on in Hildebrand's head. I get the feeling we'll be hearing a lot more of it.
