It's been four years since Brooklyn-based Hall of Fame released their mesmerizing self-titled third album (not to be confused with their self-titled 1996 debut), and during their absence the subterranean tides which govern enlightened tastes and imaginations obviously continued to ebb and flow. As fortune would have it, however, the psych-folk landscape that Hall of Fame helped germinate is now at full bloom; Paradise Now is one more prize to this year's already bountiful harvest.
Though it's doubtful that music this communal and vaporous can have a true focal point, the trio's sound is generally organized around the talents of singer-instrumentalist Samara Lubelski, who formerly played violin with artsy Rodan spin-off The Sonora Pine. Lubelski also moonlights as an engineer at the renowned Rare Book Room recording studio (where she assisted on such Pitchfork-friendly albums as Ted Leo's Hearts of Oak and The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat) and on Paradise Now it sounds as though Hall of Fame had ample studio time to fully marinate and slow-cook their songs to a smoke-ringed maturity.
As with fellow Siltbreeze alumni Charalambides and Tower Recordings (whose seminal 2001 release Folk Scene also featured contributions from Lubelski), Hall of Fame use some of the traditional instruments and methods of folk-rock as a gateway to a monumental, highly personalized cosmic drift that swiftly eludes any earthbound categorization. Paradise Now is more song-oriented than the trio's previous work, and in places Lubelski's languorous vocals recall some of Georgia Hubley's most engaging lullabies with Yo La Tengo. But even at their most accessible, these songs possess such unstable molecular structures that every sound is permitted to gradually and elegantly dissipate into the ether in the same manner a campfire slowly consumes a handful of pine needles.
Tracks like "Endless Returns" or "Hall of Fire"-- with their gauzy guitar arpeggios and whispered, indistinct vocals-- may at first fool you into branding Paradise Now "lo-fi", but a couple of attentive listens should prove that passages initially mistaken for bottomless murk actually teem with carefully sculpted layers of light and movement. Thin shafts of violin and other plucked strings dodge and weave through the gentle, persistent hum of vintage amplifiers, while the percussion completely abandons forward propulsion and instead settles on slo-mo cymbal crashes and distant conversation. Even the placidly strummed acoustics of "Arrow By Day" eventually begin to disintegrate pixel-by-pixel, until the tune is carried off on the backs of dragonflies and replaced by the hazy ecstasy of "My Sweet Miasma" which sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain on holiday in the Hundred Acre Wood.
Throughout the album, Hall of Fame maintain such a uniform level of mood and texture that naysayers might think that the band has merely rewritten the same song 10 different times. But those who prefer to do their astral navigating uninterrupted by any superfluous intrusions from reality will surely consider Hall of Fame's consistency to be a virtue, and they could soon find immersion into the calming and restorative waters of Paradise Now to be their recreation of choice.
