The Fairline Parkway "A Memory Of Open Spaces" (The Kora)
My favorite brand of indie pop is best described through negations: It's not too careful, not too precious, not too gentle, not too coy and not too cold. Of course, that's a rather fussy way to explain un-fussy music. (It's like when you're at a wedding, and somebody reads 1 Corinthians 13, the one about how love is not this-or-that, and you want to blast J. Geils' "Love Stinks" on a boombox.)
Anyway, you probably could see this coming: A Memory Of Open Spaces hits all of those "nots" -- it's a subtle album that never turns somnolent, and it offsets its cozy-chair sonics (barely-there vocals; acoustic guitars; firm-but-quiet drumming; and occasional piano, horns or strings) with perfectly controlled undercurrents of tension and dissatisfaction. The country-dusted "Robbed Blind" is quintessential: The lyrics are tough to quote, but from what I can make out, they're more about entropy than anything. And the band plays as if fueled only by breezes and rustling oaks. The Sea & The Cake would've made it icy; Sufjan Stevens would've gone searching for some agape. (It's much of the same elsewhere on the album. I'm not sure how I feel about the kinda-cranky "Movie Stars," though. It's basically a roll call of old-timers, and it's way more conceptual than anything else on the disc.)
None of this should be surprising; almost everybody in Fairline Parkway has served some time in bands with a similar indie-pop M.O. Their collective resume includes not only the New Zealand-inspired Roofwalkers (which is still an D.C. active band), but also Antlerand, The Kingdom and The Minders. But A Memory Of Open Spaces stands on its own as a pretty little thing -- another unassuming lesson about the fine line between holding back and shutting down.
PREVIOUSLY: Nortec Collective | Pink Skull | The Last Shadow Puppets | Kail | Grupo Fantasma | Mannequin Men | Nicolay & Kay | Times New Viking | Lyrics Born | Shelby Lynne | The Stance Brothers | Kokayi | The Sword | Fuck Buttons | Cadence Weapon | Paul Oakenfold
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