At first glance, it seems bewildering that the insane and drug-addicted would comprise such a large percentage of the world's critic-accredited geniuses. It's not hard to see why, though: the work of weird people is hard to figure out sometimes, and as critics often lack the patience to put forth a concerted effort to do so, they'll often offhandedly laud incomprehensible art as genius (word to Merzbow's mother).
Gordon Anderson (aka Lone Pigeon) is a strange one. An erstwhile member of the Beta Band who co-wrote some of that band's most accessible material (including the certifiable indie smash "Dry the Rain"), Anderson came down with health problems that resulted in him leaving the group, just before the critical whirlwind swept. Concubine Rice, his third full-length release and first with stateside distribution, sounds instantly familiar, like the most idiosyncratic, oddball moments on Beta Band's self-titled disc, but without any of the groove behind it. At its strongest, Concubine Rice is a tribute to the great sixties songwriters seen through the lens of an acid trip (or vice versa); at its worst-- and at its most frequent-- the disc wallows in pointless, unfocused, non-sequitur nonsense. The sycophants would tell you it's quirky genius. I'm telling you it's not.
Song fragments are a staple of Lone Pigeon's aesthetic. The majority of these tracks are broken down into several fragments, most bearing little relationship to one another. Album-by-ADD can be an effective technique (see Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of Bewilderbeast or the Beta Band's own self-titled full-length) so long as the fragments have a point and the tunes are compelling. But Concubine Rice meanders aimlessly, haphazardly wandering with little sense of melody at all. And worse: the few tracks that are memorably melodic are painfully derivative, like the Lennon-inflected "Heaven Come Down", the sparse, Neil Young-ish "Waterfall", the straight-up, "Drive My Car"-style Beatles rip on the opening to "Old Mr. Muncherman" and the Beatles-by-way-of-Oasis mug on "Lay Me Down". Incidentally, by "derivative", I don't mean "sounds like". You can tell what the influence is, but the execution is absolutely half-assed; at times, it hits like accidental mockery.
Everything on Concubine Rice is drenched in "weird". This is especially true of the production, which varies from in-studio digital to inner-ass four-track. This lends the album some charm but, lacking songs to back up the ambience, any charm is pointless. It's lost among his refusal to make me give a damn. Same goes for the instrumentation: just as varied as the production, using the standard folk-pop guitars and pianos, while throwing-in a healthy dose of off-center Casiotone backbeats, samples, mandolins, and some unrecognizable horn-like things. Again, charming, a little creative, but ultimately ineffectual.
Also falling under the "weird" heading are Lone Pigeon's lyrics. He sings about elephants, chimpanzees, "the ancient hubbard cow of bubbletoop" (he rhymes it with "poop"), and a chick named Catherine to whom he expresses his displeasure with saccharine and deodorant. Amusing, maybe, for the first two minutes or so, the words that accompany this mess seem to deliberately lack depth or poeticism-- not to mention anything a sober listener could relate to.
Right now, the genius inside of Lone Pigeon lies sleeping, undisturbed. Several key items could awaken this genius within, including a Ritalin prescription, a good producer, the concept of "focus", and maybe a Tony Robbins. Implement these changes and the future might bode well for Mr Anderson. As for Concubine Rice, though, there's not much to "get". Nor is there much to "buy".
