As if the name weren't enough, the first two songs on this album wear their faults on their sleeve. "I Don't Know Where 2 Start" and "Highways of our Mindz" make a show of sloppy-cum-cute, like a cross between Pavement and the soundtrack to a Peanuts cartoon. On the former, Singley sings just under the notes over short bursts of guitar and elementary drums, not to mention liberal bursts of laser sound effects. "Highways of our Mindz" rolls over itself even harder, a knee-slapping sing-a-long that's unselfconscious if not exactly tuneful, sounding rosy-cheeked and squeezably soft.
Then something unexpected happens. "Yr Little Hand in Mind" is a sudden shift in mood, a fingerpicked acoustic ballad with a swooning Beach Boys choir behind Singley. The mood flips again with the following "Short Sleeve Stumblah", a burst of epileptic lo-fi, and then flattens out with "Bank of the SUN", which is just as unpredictable as the album's opening, but has a strong enough melody to hold it together. And, more lasers.
"Watersong" is another surprisingly gentle turn, a weighty piano ballad without the sap, which segues into the instrumental reprise "Seahorse". It floats into some familiar Flaming Lips territory, but it's an innocuous tribute. After hearing a few more coy, gentle songs like "Holyrollercoaster" or the country-flecked surrealism of "Underneath", inexplicable punctuation and judicious use of "z" in song titles (and the band name) seems less like attention-seeking and more like a personal quirk.
I don't love every track, but I do feel like I've entered a back door into someone's creative process, short as his attention span may be. It's hard to say if the album is greater or worse just for playing bait and switch with the first two tracks. Is pacing really that important? As is, Alan Singley and his band certainly manage to surprise, and hindsight does put those opening tracks in a new, more tolerable light. What started out sounding like nothing I needed to hear became, just maybe, the work of an unsure talent. I'm very curious to hear what he does next, whether he decides to embrace or eschew cohesion in his records. Lovingkindness sits somewhere in between, shuffling its feet.
