Professor Pez
"We Found The Beach, Where Is The Ocean?" CD
Galant Records
Genres: indie pop, lo-fi
November 2006 |
We Found The Beach is the second full-length from Professor
Pez, Norwegian lo-fi label Galant's signature act. This time
around we get even more delicious pop music, this time even better
produced and with a bit more energy and rock flare. The press release
calls them a "happy Belle and Sebastian," which is a pretty
decent description - cheery almost to a fault, PP makes lush,
vaguely folk-tinged music with no aversion to strings and brass
accompaniment. I'd describe the sound as fuller
than that of B&S,
but the common elements will probably endear fans of the band to this
material. The vocals, meanwhile, have more in common with those of
Elf Power's Andrew Rieger and Of Montreal's Kevin
Barnes. One thing I noticed is that the naively fun-loving
Professor Pez formula gets tiring after awhile; they don't have the
uniqueness of Of Montreal or the psychedelic undertones of the
Apples In Stereo to stave off tedium. Instead, We Found The
Beach kind of plateaus as the type of album you pull out every
once in awhile, when you're in the mood. There's no denying the fun in
"What Do You Do?" and cutesy "Singing Computers" (a tale of musical
doomsdayism), and as long as you don't let yourself get tired of this
all, even the less notable songs brandish their charm.
mp3s (from galantrecords.com):
the perfect test (video!),
imperial airways,
looking at stars
80%
Fun Fact: According to
wikipedia,
the name of PEZ candies originates from German the word Pfefferminz,
or peppermint, which was the first PEZ flavour.
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 16 tracks, 41:40,
distributed by
the label,
released 2005] |