The CD insert for Singer's Unhistories consists of two parts: one lone, jewel case-sized square-- the album's linoleum-floor cover-- detailing the song titles and members of the band on the reverse side, and a four-page fold-out. The outside of the fold-out features four black-and-white photos of the exterior of a dilapidated house; on the opposite side are the members of the band looking through the house's windows, each face filling the entire frame. You can create a tiny box with this insert if you stand it on its edge and touch the two end pages together-- a small abandoned house out in the middle of nowhere, with the band looking in at each other from the outside. It's a perfect metaphor for this confounding yet alluring album.
The record itself fittingly kicks off with some false starts, with drummer Adam Vida sounding like a lawnmower engine that won't turn over. Eventually, the band finally breaks into "Slow Ghosts", a lurching spastic number punctuated with chirpy guitar runs and bouts of harmonized moaning. With two former members of U.S. Maple on baord-- Adam Vida and guitarist Todd Rittman-- some listeners will peg this album in those terms. (Anyone hoping to draw direct sonic connections between Robert Lowe's work with 90 Day Men and this album, on the other hand, will end up disappointed.) In those fleeting moments when there's a particularly frantic guitar filigree (either by Rittman or Ben Vida), or a certain stumbling roll of the drums, it sounds like Al Johnson's indomitable hoarse wheeze is the only thing keeping the U.S. Maple name off the spine. However, where Singer's music most emulates the former works of its members is in its sense of musical anti-orthodoxy-- love them or loathe them, what they tried to do didn't sound like much else around. For Singer, this iconoclasm extends beyond the actual music.
Instead of having one frontman, Singer opts to treat the band as a true democracy, giving every member their turn at the microphone. Good luck trying to figure out which one is which, though-- the disc credits only include who's on the record and who produced it, and more often than not they're singing together. Solo or in unison, their quivering falsettos and affected croons might owe something to David Bowie or any of his followers, but ultimately the group's vocal turns are just as individualistic as their musical accompaniment. One minute they're aping the madrigal whimsy of labelmates Faun Fables (on "Divining"), the next they're looping guitar drones in back of passionate vocal quivering (on "Mauvais Sang"). Handholds and signposts are few and far between, and any groove the band locks into can just as easily be transformed or simply abandoned without warning. There's an organic jazz-like spontaneity to Unhistories that listeners will consider either obnoxious or endearing. These tracks are less like songs and more like awkward whispered conversations between people that are just beginning to know each other. While the end results of these "talks" might bear fruit that most would rather do without, these are definitely conversations worth having.
