Local Record Roundup
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PLASTICS HI-FI Home Brewed (self-released) After a sloppy EP and a couple mediocre singles, these unofficial chairmen of the local Flaming Lips Appreciation Society have finally done their idols justice. Elegant hooks, often in the form of sweet vocal harmonies, emerge sleepily from clouds of psychedelic ephemera–swirling guitar arpeggios, analog synth noodles, and bad-acid organ, arranged via some sort of trippy feng shui–and though you barely notice them coming, once they’re out they buzz around your head like a swarm of gnats. The quartet’s layered approach bears repeated listening: each spin so far has revealed more and more nice detail.
RED ELEPHANT More Sounds From Spaghetti Westerns (Aware) The local Aware label, best known as the folks who discovered Hootie & the Blowfish, have made a big deal of the fact that this band includes a cellist and a saxophonist. But the truly amazing thing is how Red Elephant manages, despite this instrumentation, to sound like every other strummy, feel-good middle-of-the-road act on the roster. The lineup features a slew of scene vets–drummer Kevin O’Donnell plays in Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire and leads his own retro combo the Quality Six, bassist Ken Schwartz and saxist Josh Bell played together in Cassius Clay, and cellist Eric Remschneider has done session work for conglomerates like Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, and Filter–but it’s singer-guitarist Ken Fountain, formerly of Birds at the End of the Road, who sets the bland tone here, smothering the band’s Morphine-addicted grooves with melodramatic crooning that brings to mind that bald twerp from Live.
