PLAY

City Center

June 14th, 2009

You can’t typecast Type Records. Just when you think you’ve got them pegged as black-clad mongers of doom after the recent releases by Svarte Greiner and Xela, what do they do? Release a pop record, of course. Well, not exactly; this new self-titled album by City Center takes the same sideways look at the pop song as Panda Bear took on Person Pitch. Like Panda Bear, Fred Thomas is hitherto better known for his work as part of a larger collective; in Thomas’s case Saturday Looks Good To Me. With City Center the album he takes their melodic template and scribbles all over it in dayglo colours until it is barely perceptible beneath the layers of layers. That’s just the type he is.

City Center recently released a split 7″ with Grouper, and they do share with Liz Harris a tendency towards dense organic-sounding compositions with wells of reverb and well-buried vocals. But there the similarity ends; I doubt you’d find Harris adding perky percussion, and jauntily-strummed guitars to create fizzy, scuzzy pop bangers. That is just what Thomas is capable of: “Summer School” bounces along youthfully bashing woodblocks like it burns itself into a blurry tizzy. This contrasts starkly this with the preceding track, a smear of distorted organ drones entitled “You Are A Force”. The album is at its best when it finds imaginative ways to force these two quarrelling lovers to marry. If you think that the nagging guitars and multiple layers of tumbly vocals within “Young Diamond” sound a bit too, well, Animal Collective, then just wait till a gun is put to their head and they have to repeat vows to a middle section of violin and blistering guitar eruptions.

The hazy melodies and blurry vocals of City Center’s album should be soundtracking many a joyous summer day. By playing against type, Type have played a blinder here.

Take from: mapsadaisical

MySpace: citycenternyc

Entry Filed under: Reviews