Trying to describe the Russian Futurists' singularity without resorting to hyperbole can drive a critic mad. The pertinent signifiers have already been spread thin: Ye olde faythful Beatles/Beach Boys axis of anonymity pertains in theory, but it's become synonymous with vacant pop blandstanding and doesn't do justice to Matthew Adam Hart's oversaturated sugar smacks. It seems improbable that two of the most innovative bands of the rock era have become the myopic critic's go-to comparison for every poppy, harmonizing mediocrity that's too redundant to say anything else about, but here we are. There is something Smile-y about the voluminous synth swirls and donkey-punch drums that buffer the cherub harmonies of "2 Dots on a Map", but you know what? Forget I mentioned the Beatles or the Beach Boys.
Then there's "bedroom pop," which conjures faltering confessional lyrics, feeble electronic afterthoughts, maybe some detuned toy piano and tape-hissy ambiance. It's true that Hart records his songs on a shoestring budget, in his bedroom in Ontario. He might even swaddle himself in warm quilts and rock Garanimals footie-pajamas when he records, for all I know. And it's true these songs might lose some of the alien luster with a glossier studio treatment. But unlike bedroom pop's typically gauzy and fractured mien, Hart's tunes are confidently solid and percussion-heavy, rotundly popping, locking and soaring. On "Sentiments Vs. Syllables", a prickly metallic twinkle chases the vocal line around a mechanically precise bass drum, and "Why You Gotta Do That Thing?" is a woozy monkey-bar swing over halting, carefully rattling percussion and zippering synth trills. Nothing is self-consciously fractured or haphazard; the songs hang shaggily on rigid compositional armature. You know what? Forget I mentioned bedroom pop.
Having exhausted our options, save for the requisite Flaming Lips/Magnetic Fields comparisons, we're left with hyperbole and lunacy. Hart's third LP, Our Thickness, is an exuberantly echoing starburst of lo-fi twee-pop gone grand, an opulent boudoir popera for the Taj Mahal. A crashfest of cheapo synths, poppity drums, and spun-sugar vocals, almost clownishly oversized: Check the loopy brass pageantry of "Paul Simon" or the sopping wet synths of "Still Life". It's an IMAX epic shot on Super8 and projected onto a bed sheet, a sumptuous coronation parade in a snowglobe, a theme park made of Tinker Toys: "Our Pen's Out of Ink", all distorted ba-ba-bas and jittery piano, and "Incandescent Hearts", with its foggy bleats and shimmering upsweeps, are postage-stamp epics, majestic in miniature. Get the picture?
