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So L'il:
Dear Kathy,
This release starts out intriguingly with a strange pop dirge called Enamel Animal, in which So Lil seemingly presses the organ button on the keyboard. The female vocalist sings using a disorderly mix of Bjork and Sleater-Kinney elements. The song works as a bit of a spacey track, and things seem to be going alright when we first hear some male vocals mixed in on Carribean Dreams. This song is quiet and peaceful, but Dear Kathy, continues to take a step into weirder territory. The old indie temptation to sound weird just for the hell of it seems pretty tough for So Lil to resist. Perhaps Im referring to the final track The Outwardly Ugly Secretly Beautiful which makes up almost half this album clocking in at nearly seventeen minutes. This track basically reveals a quirky experimental synth band pretending that its Sonic Youth. The whole thing is meandering with no structure. It has spoken word vocals that evoke a certain touch of Thurston and Kim; but the music is so frail that the nonsensical lyrical babbling is up front and center, and it makes the song tiresome even before the five-minute mark. Its a fine thing then that Inside precedes this ill-advised epic. Here the band gives us a fun little slice of synth-pop that sounds like a solid track My Favorite might have done. To my ears, female vocalist Robin Mapes sounds better on this track when just keeping things simple and pretty, and the synth-programming of her bandmates carries the track along in a delightful manner. I cant really fault So Lil for searching for other forms of musical expression that arent as formulaic as Inside in structure, but unfortunately the more experimental tracks on Dear Kathy, dont hit the mark quite as well this one does.
Check Amazon, Insound and CD Universe to purchase this album.
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