Hayfever

Golden Pollen
Savath and Savalas
Anti, 2007
2.5 stars

I really wanted to like this album - the minimalist sleeve design and beautiful cover artwork from Japanese artist/musician Hisham Bharoocha promised so much. But the whole package here is like a piece of junk wooden furniture polished to a showroom sheen - it's nice to have in your lounge, but you don't really want to sit on it. Savath and Savalas is the solo project of Prefuse 73's Guillermo Scott Herren, and with Golden Pollen he creates dreamy glitch-infused folk. The fact that all the lyrics are in Spanish may be the problem here, as it puts more pressure on the music itself to hold your attention - which, unfortunately, it can't. Music like this is great to listen to when you can hear it building to something, but when it's just meandering along and going nowhere in particular - as it is here - it's easy to lose interest. Not even a slew of guest appearances (Jose Gonzales sings on one track, and members of Battles and Tarantula AD lend their vocal and instrumental talents) could keep me from wandering off to make Vegemite toast and check my email.

Artwork: A+

Published in mX, Thursday 2 August 2007.