Erstwhile Microphones vocalist Khaela Maricich-- also known as The Blow-- recently mused in her blog about "tiny particles of feelings." It's as if emotions exist as microscopic units, she wrote, and these tiny emo-atoms can combine to form larger meanings. Sure enough, her previously cassette-only debut is chock-full of what she terms "tiny touches." But its fragile guitar fumblings and sex-deprived vocals mostly just add up to the primitive demo tape you might expect-- no emotional apotheoses here.
Unlike Maricich's recent salvoes into glitchy lap-pop (last year's Poor Aim: Love Songs) and slinky, Gorillaz-flavored beats (2003's Concussive Caress), Everyday Examples of Humans Facing Straight Into the Blow is a stripped-down affair. Maricich manages to make her beginner's acoustic guitar quirky and her anygirl vocals sweet, but those and a pair of corduroys (and a splash of piano) are all you get. And Phil Elvrum and Mirah don't swoop in to save the day, as they did on the Blow's Bonus Album EP.
What's left is often interesting-- in typically understated K Records fashion. The multitracked "oh-oh" harmonies that back a capella "Why Don't You" would probably turn into clipped, dance-y samples like those on Poor Aim's "The Love That I Crave" if Maricich recorded them today. As they are, they nicely evoke the ocean she mentions in her lyrics, until tinny, distorted drums (the only percussion on the album) crash in like the surf against a rocky Olympic Coast cliff. The bucolic vision and folky strums of "Milkmaid" could wind up on the next Devendra Barnhart-curated compilation. "That Boy" brings out the touching innocence in quiet lust by exposing it as something universal, not perverse.
Still, many of Maricich's touches dissipate on frequent listens. Opener "Oh Canada" drowsily blends melodic elements from Rose Melberg's "My Heaven, My Sky", the traditional "Danny Boy", and Oasis's "She's Electric"-- a pleasant mix, but hardly a memorable kickoff. Eagerly adolescent "Tidalwave" is the forgettable, tempo-jumping stepsister of "Why Don't You". The squeaky, arrhythmic chord changes of "Surf Song" give way to vaguely sexual moans, but somehow that fails to shock from an artist who says The Blow is just an easier way to pronounce Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano, the moniker under which she originally released this collection.
Taken together, the tiny nano-feelings underlying Maricich's songs don't form a cohesive whole, but they do paint a picture of potential. Nothing here is as catchy or multifaceted as later compositions like "What Tom Said About Girls" or "How Naked Are We Going to Get", and that's a sign of Maricich's growth, not a knock against her. One cavil, though: The reissue trims the original's flowery, Moz-length song titles into hopelessly mundane clichés. "My Heart Is Like a Savage, My Heart Would Like a Sausage" becomes, uh, "My Heart". Emotional particles build better when they're not being chopped down.
