Wait a minute. That is just crazy. A Ladybug Transistor? A Ladybug Transistor? What kind of Ladybug needs a transistor? Some kind of weird robot bug, programmed to fly away home? Who would build such a thing? Or is the ladybug itself a transistor? What fanciful machine would have a Ladybug for a transistor? How would that work? The entire concept is making me insane.
Still, I must pull it together, unblow my mind, and assess the music of Argyle Heir. What kind of crazy stockinged beneficiary is that!? These guys are crazy! Stop. Stop. Must focus. Okay, let's try this again:
Do you love flutes? If so, you might love the fourth full-length studio album from this acclaimed Brooklyn combo. The crooning baritone, the angel-voiced backup vocals, and the gentle minstrel accompaniment might be exactly your thing. If you merely like flutes, you might still find this charming. After all, the Ladybug Transistor are very well received, critically. Check out Pitchfork's 8.0 for their previous release, The Albemarle Sound. They even had a poster featured in the movie High Fidelity! So who am I to object to their soft balladry?
I like Belle and Sebastian and LT labelmates Magnetic Fields (singer Gary Olson would be a likely guest on some Stephen Merritt project). But maybe, if I'd found some other gentle, mellow, competently written records first, I wouldn't have warmed to those acts so much. Still, I think both Belle and Sebastian and the Magnetic Fields capture a melancholy that tempers their sweetness, at a quality above this. Maybe I can only take so much bathtub music. I have three Belle and Sebastian records and sixty-nine Magnetic Fields songs. Sixty-nine of them! I'm full up!
Mellowness aside, how are the songs? The opener, "Fire On the Ocean," stops and starts effectively, and features some useful tempo changes. As does "The Glass Pane," along with some nice country picking. "Echoes" has a peaceful, Grateful Dead-type lilt to it. Really, though, there's a lot of sameness on Argyle Heir, and not nearly enough differentiation. The lyrics, while not cute or over-psychedelic, are fairly abstract and don't tell much of a story. And, for all the melodic importance to the record, I don't catch myself humming any of the tunes when I'm lying around in my sunroom. I hear all the instruments moving around up and down the scale, but these tunes don't seem to have the hands to grab with.
Olson's voice is nice, if uninvested emotionally, and he's missed when instrumental such as "Going Up North (Icicles)" and "Fjords of Winter" take us inside the elevator. It's not that they can't help their gentle ways; the Ladybug Transistor (man, that name continues to just absolutely blow my mind!) betray that they can step up the energy almost as high as Crosby, Stills and Nash with one teaser that fades in and out (a là Beatles by way of Pavement) featuring backtracked guitars. Maybe if you play Argyle Heir backward it will rock.
To the band's credit, this is a fully realized album. I just don't want to come to the same realization. Four composers all sound like the same creator. Songs are nicely brief, achieving all their modest ambitions, and end without fuss. The strings and bouncy keyboards, and of course, the flute, overlap well. And while I could do without this much flutery, I'm never aggravated by any Bacharachian gestures. With this kind of music, it's easy to slip into cute moves, and with the exception of the Merry Olde English waltz time silliness of "Catherine Elizabeth," the Ladybug Transistor avoid this.
In fact, despite the thoughtfulness of the arrangements, it quickly becomes clear that nothing truly surprising will ever happen. This act could learn from another labelmate, Neutral Milk Hotel, about the possibility for arrangement to enhance and transport instead of merely tastefully support a song. Of course, it's easy to stumble when pursuing such adventures, but that's what we expect our artists to risk. They cannot just make pleasant music that does not actually excite.
