Like perhaps many of us, the Crayon Fields are too young to have witnessed their musical heroes the first time around. Here the Melbourne, Australia quartet practically take pride in that fact, grasping the Beach Boys' ocean-flecked harmonies, the Zombies' dreamy eloquence, and the Association's gentle melodies, then making them sound even younger. Debut album Animal Bells-- released last year Down Under but not yet available stateside-- applies an artful naïve-pop aesthetic to yesterday's nuanced minor-key imaginings, with woozy falsetto, Byrdsian 12-string guitar, and eponymous toy bells.
The lighter side of the 1960s and 70s forms the album's foundation, with the AM-ready vocal reverb of the Clientele's Suburban Light as a starting point. Idyllic "Back, Front, Side, Low, High" entertains a twinkling guitar arpeggio from Chad & Jeremy's "Summer Song". Tremulous organs abound, from the tempo-shifting "Would It Be So Strange?" to the low-key boardwalk elegance of "Drains". Still, even as bespectacled singer/guitarist Geoff O'Connor murmurs, "We're filling the potholes on your electric Rhodes," on understated "Potholes", chaotic guitar joins in with the cool clamor of the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On".
The Crayon Fields can also be as twee as Brian Wilson, if not the Boy Least Likely To. On iTunes, Animal Bells comes up as "children's music." The mid-2005 addition of multi-instrumentalist Chris Hung helped the band embrace bells, glockenspiel, and other kid-friendly instrumentation, after two early EPs drew comparisons to Pavement. With backing vocals by members of underrated Aussie indie-poppers Minimum Chips, "Lovely Time" evokes the atmospheric repetitions of Miami's the Postmarks, only fuzzy-wuzzier. O'Connor sings about handclaps on handclap-laden "Impossible Things", while "Living So Well" is a boy/girl duet worthy of early Camera Obscura. The Crayon Fields cloak their songs in chiming, puppy-dog cuteness the way other bands use noise.
"Child is the father of the man," Wilson sang (long before the Alfonso Cuarón film). Animal Bells shows the Crayon Fields bringing out the casually childlike in their forefathers. Standout "Helicopters" merges the band's sense of play with their sense of history amid swirling synthesizer, acoustic jangle, and lyrical visions of a blue, heavenly sky. "I want to be famous, gee," O'Connor bashfully admits on the closing track. For an album like Animal Bells, it'd be pretty shitty to begrudge him.
