Review by Jason MacNeil
You can't fault Our Brother the Native for trying to make the best of this album. The fact that the band created this debut record before even meeting as a group should definitely raise eyebrows, though, and the trio has created one of the more bizarre, disjointed, fragmented, and at times boring pieces of music you've probably heard. The album starts off on a promising note with "Introduction -- Welcome to the Aviary," which sounds like a cross between Devendra Banhart and children skipping rope to a Syd Barrett nursery rhyme. But after those precious few moments, the song peters out quickly. "Apodiformes" is a faster, uptempo tune before spacy vocals and effects come in and out of the subtle folk-pop song. It contains a childlike delivery with some interesting accents that seems to make it work, with good but not great results. The songs are promising to start, particularly the light, airy Floyd-ian feel that oozes from "Falconiformes." The song's Southern-tinted vocals give it a warm, earthy feel. But it then devolves into something quite weird, with high-pitched female vocals coming into the mix. Early on, the listener realizes this might work in a live setting with film accompanying it, but on disc alone it slowly becomes grating. And the trio involved in the album's creation does little to remove these numbers from what could be considered a very hazy, unfinished, and unfocused presentation. "Welcome to the Arborary" starts off well before again veering into a string of oddly placed effects and quirky vocals with little direction. Comparisons to CocoRosie are justified, but only during the lullaby-like "Catalpa" do Our Brother the Native measure up to that band. The first highlight has to be the pretty, hushed, and tender tones of "Tilia Petiolaris," which strolls along without a care in the world. Unfortunately, there is a fine line between art and tedium, and the songs too often fall into the latter category, especially on "Nautical Spirits -- Welcome to the Aquarium." And songs such as "Octopodidae" do nothing to persuade you otherwise. "Nautilidae" wraps up this album. It's an improvement on what is otherwise a record that would take a number of listens to warm up to -- if at all.
Our Brother the Native
Tooth & Claw
[Fat Cat; 2006]
Rating: 5.6
Our Brother the Native's songs are loose and sprawling, pieced together with acoustic guitars, sloppy percussion, fragments of field recordings, toys raided for circuits to bend, and unison voices that sound at home around a campfire. If that sounds familiar, it's because everything about them slots with the ramshackle junkyard folk of early Animal Collective, from their music style to their name to their album title to their label. There's a lot of this sort of thing going around, of course, but Our Brother the Native have an additional hook: Two of these guys are just old enough to drive; the grizzled vet is just old enough to vote.
Their tender ages adds an initial tinge of interest because this sort of music usually comes with certain assumptions. First, you generally want bands to learn the rules of songwriting before they start breaking them. Second, you expect they've absorbed a wide range of music before deciding to work in this narrow vein (see the Nurse With Wound list enclosed with their debut). Neither of those things seem possible with Our Brother the Native, when you have two 16-year old guys making music in their bedroom in Redford, Michigan, and e-mailing parts to an 18-year old in California so that he can tinker with them. We have to assume, then, that Our Brother the Native liked what they heard from the Paw Tracks catalog and decided to do something of their own.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, and in the end all we have is an album of songs to contend with. The good and bad of Our Brother the Native stick out right away, and further listens do little to smooth these extremes. The production, even with the bedroom recordings and e-mailed files, is consistently engaging, busy with unnamable noises while leaving enough holes to let light through. Of particular interest is the subtle use of voices taped from movies, which at their best bring to mind The Books. These recordings give an added feeling of dislocation and uneasiness, coming on like a TV humming in the background of an institution while residents bang around on instruments spread across the floor.
The vocals, typically a warbling and tuneless falsetto that makes Ariel Pink sound like Jeff Buckley, are the album's undoing. You get the feeling that the songs rendered thus are supposed to sound "disturbed" and "creepy" but the effect is just the opposite-- an amateurish annoyance robbing the clattering musical background of its earned dark vibe. Lyrics are mostly incomprehensible, which is to the good, especially when you hear the syrupy love poetry tossed off in "Tilia Petiolaris", the only song sung in a normal register.
Teenagers, man, what are you going to do? Still, have to give respect where it's due: bad singing and clunky lyrics can be fixed, and all things considered this is a very promising debut. I mean, "Welcome To The Arborary" as-is would sound really good tucked somewhere on Here Comes the Indian, and that's something. Our Brother the Native have ideas and a feel for atmosphere and I'd love to hear what they're doing in five years.
-Mark Richardson, July 28, 2006
Link-arrowMySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/ourbrotherthenative
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