Strange Birds

Visiter
Dodos
French Kiss, 2008
3.5 stars

I don’t know whether it’s the boho, art school vibe, or the loose Deerhoof-ish folk instrumentation, but this album has a real San Francisco feel to it. It’s a set of songs you can relax into, like a crusty old couch in a city bar – at first something seems a bit not right, but once you’re in you’re not going anywhere. Banjo strums and drumsticks slapped on chair legs push the songs along and into one another - it all sounds kind of slapped together and hurried, but the pace of songs such as Fools gives it an uplifting energy that Animal Collective would be proud to call their own. Elsewhere there are moments of acoustic funk (Park Song) and ramshackle blues (Winter), making for a real lively affair. It’s easy to forget that it’s just two guys, as they pump out more instrumentation than a three-way battle of the one-man-bands. Quite an effort.

Artwork: B+
I'm a massive fan of kids' artwork - I eat most meals off Picture Plates made when I was a kid myself - so, for me, these guys get runs straight off the bat. The story goes that they performed for a class of LA school kids and afterwards the kids gave them a bunch of drawings they had done, which Meric Long and Logan Kroeber decided to use as their album artwork. The strange spelling of the album's title 'Visiter' came from one of these drawings. Nice touch.

Published in mX Thursday July 24, 2008