Tunabunny PCP Presents Alice in Wonderland Jr., Kedama Live at Sunrise Studios
Tunabunny
PCP Presents Alice in Wonderland Jr.
(Happy Happy Birthday to Me)
Any sprawling double-album in the pop/rock realm will automatically garner comparisons to the Beatles’ 1968 self-titled album (a.k.a. “The White Album”), and while most people will linger on the album’s diversity, what’s particularly remarkable for this writer is how, in spite of the diversity, each track still has certain unmistakable Beatles features—the extreme example is “Helter Skelter,” which manages to be terrifying while sporting pop backing vocals and Ringo Starr’s trademark drumming style.
The Athens, Ga. quartet Tunabunny pulls off a similar trick on its fifth album—a double-album set titled PCP Presents Alice in Wonderland Jr. The dilemma any artist faces is risking artistic stagnation while fostering a recognizable style, or branching out while possibly losing your base audience which will insufferably utter, “I liked the old stuff better.”
Tunabunny clearly does not like to be pigeonholed, and its new album ostensibly has no cohesion; however, the tracks actually are tied together with an undercurrent of characteristic weirdness in various forms but mostly electronic buggery, enhancing the core pop songs.
There’s barely any time to breathe here, as the album bounces around with quick changes, with some tracks being mere fragments or one-minute songs; as a result, it’s impossible to fully absorb or appreciate with a single listen.
One great thing about the album is that the listener’s favorite song will likely change upon every listen; one day, it might be the catchiest song about self-immolation, “Incinerate,” seductively voiced by Brigette Herron—the next day, it could be “Blackwater Homes,” with an affecting vocal delivery from Mary Jane Hassell.
There’s the raucous punky stomper “Noise Problems,” the odd campfire singalong of “Winter’s Mind” with electronic ghosts, the tense synth-punk-Krautrock soundstream of “Pretending to Bend” and the strangely captivating “Dream Sugar” with bagpipe-esque drones. On an album that refuses to stand still, the final, extended track “I Thought I Caught It (With You)” seems to be playing a joke on the listener, with numerous fake endings.
While pop music is deep within Tunabunny’s heart, it hovers with playfully menacing sound waves like a taunting 8-year-old saying “I’m not touching you” while waving close to your face.
Kedama
Live at Sunrise Studios
(Guerssen)
The Swiss band Kedama has a name inspired by the city of Ketama—known as a hash production center of Morocco—but don’t expect the group’s music to be hazy jam-band noodling. The new reissue of Kedama’s little-heard album Live at Sunrise Studios, originally released in 1976 in a small, private run of 200 copies, reveals a band profoundly influenced by prog-rock and with a relatively short attention span, rarely content to linger on a theme for very long.
Recorded at Etienne Conod’s noteworthy Sunrise Studios in Switzerland, which documented such acts as Henry Cow, Yello, LiLiPUT and Art Bears, Live at Sunrise Studios is an early recording for the studio, revealing a facility yet to find its footing. It’s a raw recording, particularly with the drums and the punishingly bright cymbals, that sounds better than a demo but not quite as polished as one might expect or desire.
The band’s keyboards—including Moog synths and a Mellotron—along with the complexity of its compositions immediately bring to mind prog powerhouses Yes and King Crimson. In particular, “Our Power” has a strong early ‘70s King Crimson vibe, with a Mellotron flute sound and a demeanor that can swiftly change from furious to wandering; its ramping tempo leads to a tempestuous ending, packing a wallop in just four minutes.
The album’s centerpiece is the 12-minute “Finale” (cheekily sequenced as the second of four tracks) with some rough and heavy guitar wailing and power chords mixed with lighter, more sensitive and playful elements, like a hopeful piano riff that unfurls its glistening patterns.
While the proper album is reissued on vinyl, it’s bundled with essentially another album’s worth of bonus tracks, available as digital downloads, that reveal the group’s ambitions for diverse approaches. For example, “Chinese Dragon” mixes its tight vamps with conspicuous synth wankery, while “Improvisations” has a strong Indian influence with sitar and tabla parts, along with vibraphone notes; then there’s the gentle drifting and graceful wooshing of a chorus-treated guitar on “Intermezzo.”
There is ample enthusiasm to cover a lot of territory by darting from one theme to the next, and one minor criticism is that these disparate pieces could be stitched together more elegantly sometimes—but then again, that’s part of Kedama’s spirit and delivery.