Wednesday, July 8, 2009

3 Tracks: Dodos - Visiter

Albums are as much a construction as a whole, the way the parts fit together, as they are about their individual songs. The way Southern Point pauses, breathes, and flows into Two Weeks on Veckatimest, or the way Have a Cigar quiets into Wish You Were Here with that gentle pause and the crackle of the TV radio.
Those albums build like a film - rising and lowering to perfectly find the mood that you want. So what I want to do in this column thing, which I will try to do every Wednesday, is highlight the way good albums are produced (and give you the music, for real).

The way good songs flow into each other, to give you brilliant (the way light is brilliant) stories.

To start with some strong and real: Dodos first album, Visiter.



Red and Purple-->Eyelids-->Fools

It opens the way a camera flashes with a huge burst of light and a sudden strum of the guitar. The Dodos sound is not about convention. The rough, crayony album art speaks to that. Immediately you are introduced to sonic guitar, a literal fly by of 12- string and piano pulsing, and the horse-clap of the drums. It's that rough feeling that starts the album, the way a street performer sings and his drummer hits overturned plastic buckets.

"Come and join us in the trenches
Red and purple by our side"



Is it a revolution or a love album? By the end, you know it's an anthem. The pace quickens, and Long's clevver lyrics transition into the succinct "Eyelids." His hope is that you will meet him when arrives he says, as he finishes, and just as you hope: the sticks come in.

"Fools" moves in a gallop, and the first thing you want to do is slap your thigh in tempo. The guitar comes cascading down, the sticks clack together, until finally Long relaxes with:

"I've been, I've been silent"

It's an exciting, stopless debut from a band just getting started. When songs come together, especially without breaks, you feel a sense of pace building, and to let that expel is criminal. The Dodos take advantage of your mood in Visiter: a sense of gathering; of following the ones you love and of revolution. Each song folds into the next one nicely, and there is an optimism to it that lacks in a lot of already great rock albums.

The Dodos - Red and Purple

The Dodos - Eyelids

The Dodos - Fools

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