Just by tallying up his freelance work with Olivia Tremor Control and Need New Body, along with former band Bablicon's connections with Neutral Milk Hotel and Icy Demons, you can assume David McDonnell (aka the Diminisher) has probably accumulated his fair share of psych-pop residue. That's not to discredit McDonnell's talents, just to emphasize that Imaginary Volcano, McDonnell's first album as the Diminisher, is hardly a green debut from some guy off the street.
Fact is, the Diminsher, who received his nickname from his Bablicon bandmates, slaved away three years on Imaginary Volcano while between tours and side projects. As a result, Volcano may not be the most cohesive album, but it makes up for it in meticulousness. While the E6 propinquity shines through on a lot of tracks, McDonnell proves hard to pin down stylistically. Like Of Montreal's newer material, there's a psychedelic baseline, but genres are constantly compounded as McDonnell piles on additional electronic parts. Likewise, McDonnell knows when to hedge the sonic mêlée and let his crafty melodies take center stage. As a vocalist, however, McDonnell's no Kevin Barnes, harkening back instead to the even-keeled British croons of Paul McCartney or Ray Davies.
For all the press kit depictions of McDonnell as a mad scientist conducting psychedelic experiments in some lab, his songwriting feels very deliberate, and the hooks very blatantly grab the ear. "Brooklyn's Sinking" and "Snail Song" sound like moody Beatles songs, bouncing across arpeggiating keyboard lines and charming melodies. "A Subtle Sign"'s obsessive piano hook resembles trippier Rolling Stones albums like Between the Buttons and Flowers. Occasionally McDonnell ventures out of this 1960s sound, such as on more finely produced tracks like "Trainstation" and the title track. Even with their playful mod leanings though, the songs maintain McDonnell's steady clip of hooks.
Rounding out Volcano are McDonnell's more cerebral tracks, which transmogrify the album's catchy NyQuil trip into a full-fledged LSD romp. "Timshael", which nearly shares a name with East of Eden's life-affirming mantra, skitters over a winding harpsichord pattern that almost sounds backwards while McDonnell's impressionistic vocals wander in and out of the mix. The journey grows weirder by album's end, finishing with the one-two punch of the Radiohead-influenced "Dreaming in Asheville" and cinematic strings-only closer "A Building Named Lucille". Although McDonnell flexes some ambient muscle here, these far-out snippets only scratch the majestic surface of what this album could become. For all its nifty songwriting, Volcano's still just a bedroom album staring out its window at more magical lands, though it attests to McDonnell's potential for a much more transcendental album down the road-- should the guy ever find the time.
