Author: Michael A. Parker
Source: D.M.G. Newsletter May 2005
I’m completely in love with this album. I keep it by my stereo at all times. I could easily write a few pages about this astonishingly original experimental chamber rock pop naive song prog cinema music, but space is limited here, so let’s do the quick-and-dirty name game. My research reveals the following major influences on these young multi-media art eccentrics from Philadelphia: The Beach Boys, The Ruins, Van Dyke Parks, Henry Cow, Cheer Accident (especially “Enduring the American Dream”), 10CC (getting into this band was the major musical turning point in life for one member), Gentle Giant, Van Morrison. “Impossible bedfellows,” you say? That’s why I said “astonishingly original”!! Here’s my best formula after months of analysis: Gastr Del Sol + ELO + Robert Wyatt’s “Rock Bottom”, all noted especially for their extremely unconventional song structure. In fact, this album is like a suite of about 20 different moods and styles in a non-repeating sequence. Though often absent for long stretches, vocals are critical; they’re boyish, charming, and earnest, sometimes accompanied by banjo or piano and sometimes decked out in fabulous harmony parts. Instrumentation in rough order of significance: keyboards, electric guitar, drumkit, bass guitar, violin, banjo, trumpet, saxophone, studio trickery.
They rock out avant-prog style in short bursts here and there, and I want to make special mention of one instrumental track that’s an absolutely orgasmic marriage of RIO and math rock, starting out with something that could almost be from Fred Frith’s “Gravity” and then moving into slashing, dramatic stop-start attacks and cross-rhythms. But that’s a bit of an exception for the album, which is pretty dreamy and drifty overall. Make A Rising is the best thing to happen to experimental pop music since Animal Collective started writing actual songs, and I’d call it the best ambitious song album since Mr. Bungle’s “California”, compared to which it’s homey, introspective, whimsical, and delicate, and without the virtuosity, bombast, quotations, or big-budget sheen, but with the same level of epic, creative, bizarre songwriting.