Well, Smile finally arrived, so I guess this means we're just a few months away from the orchestral pop backlash. In the meantime, here's In the Alleyway, the full-length debut by New Orleans duo Hercules. Though this record shares its whirling melodies and kaleidoscopic arrangements with the rest of today's Brian Wilson adherents, its most striking aspect is its minimalism. Instead of the emulating the kitchen-sink quality of The Flaming Lips or Head of Femur, Hercules have a quiet, restrained brilliance: a "Ruby Tuesday" drum fill here, glissanding "Four Seasons" strings there, and big Bacharach tunefulness all over the damn place.
Hercules are songwriting and production team Peter Baldwin and Ben Sumner, who previously played everything but the didgeridoo for local neo-psych group Bipolaroid. The pair has also recorded a Christmas record, a covers record, scored some films, and did some undisclosed work with Lullaby Baxter. Its members are instrumentalists, but Fan Modine's Gordon Zacharias provides elegant, restrained vocals on seven of In the Alleyway's 11 tracks, and his high, innocent delivery and touch of Morrissey-esque melodrama makes compelling art of their unadorned lyrics, which cover the usual indie pop touchstones: lost love, disillusionment, and all manner of bad weather. The blithely grief-stricken "Good for You" provides the album's lyrical high point, as Zacharias hides his tears like Smokey Robinson or the aforementioned Moz behind swooning orchestration.
Much of the album leans heavily on classic mid-60s pop. Opener "Something's Been Missing from My Life" starts with a stab of organs so familiar you half-expect a voice chime in and say, "I/ I love the colorful clothes she wears." Languid acoustic guitars and squiggly electrics are often panned all the way to either side of the mix. And the strings are inevitably Spectoresque, particularly when they seize the foreground on peppy instrumental "Let's Go Out".
Despite the 1960s fetish, Hercules are at their best when they incorporate more modern elements into their sound. For example, after bouncy Revolver-style horns leaven the simple melancholia of "Don't Cry", fuzzed-out shoegaze guitars arrive for an elegantly dissonant plane crash of a coda. The strings on the leisurely "Hurricane" may fit for teatime on a summer's day, but they sit atop both peaceful acoustic guitars and painterly feedback and swirling noise.
The shoegaze influence amounts only to occasional squalls amid the album's endless summer, but it points toward an inspiring new direction for smart, orchestral pop. Quick: Enjoy it, before the snobby contrarian in the next cubicle calls you a square.
