Three Imaginary Girls - Birdman

Venus On Earth

imaginary ash — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:31:18 +0000

8.9

http://www.amazon.com/Venus-Earth-Dengue-Fever/dp/B00114XM36/wwwthreeimagi-20/

Dengue Fever's fusion of East and West is something magical. Singer Ch'hom Nimol hails from Cambodia, where she is a pop star in her own right; the rest of the bandmembers are American dudes. When Nimol sings in her native tongue, you may not know what she's saying but you can feel it. When she sings in English, you are charmed by her very audible accent. Either way, the backdrop of psychedelic funk rock with surf rhythms is heavy on Farfisa, sax, heart and soul.

Venus on Earth follows up 2005's remarkable Escape From Dragon House, and though overall the idea is the same, longtime fans of the band may find that the new album feels even more like something lost in time. It could have just as easily been recorded in the 1960s, though that's not to say that it sounds at all old or stale. It's simply classic, and quite alluring, and if you close your eyes you can almost picture yourself in a darkened lounge in southeast Asia, beaded curtains surrounding you, smoking a hookah while the band plays on into the night.

Of the 11 tracks on the album, only two are completely sung in English. Both of these ("Tiger Phone Card" and "Sober Driver") are duets between Nimol and guitarist & chief songwriter Zac Holtzman, on which they trade vocals back and forth conversationally: [Holtzman] "You live in Phnom Pehn" / [Nimol] "You live in New York City" / [together] "But I think about you so, so so, so much I forget to eat," begins "Tiger Phone Card," a song about the longing and loneliness of a very long-distance relationship. On "Sober Driver," Nimol begins with a sultry late-night call to her baby to come pick her up at a party, and Holtzman's response is the song's chorus: "You called me up because I'm sober and you wanted me to drive / I'm getting tired of being treated as just a free ride / I finally figured out that you're just a thorn in my side that's withered dull and dry." The chorus is incredibly hooky and the vocal harmonies exquisite, layered over dense instrumentation. "Tiger Phone Card" and "Sober Driver" are, at least to non-Cambodian speakers, the album's most accessible and catchy tracks, and the ones that listeners will initially gravitate towards.

But the remaining songs don't suffer from the language barrier. Nimol's voice, especially when singing in her own language, has a sweetness to it, and flows effortlessly along complex melody lines. Some songs have parts in English and parts in Cambodian, others are exclusively sung in Cambodian, but either way, every song on this album is rich and beautiful. Given their emotive quality and unique sound, it's no wonder that the band's songs have found their way onto many a television or movie soundtrack, including Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers starring Bill Murray, and Showtime's Weeds.

If you're a fan of Dengue Fever already, you'll not be disappointed by the new release, and you may even be pleased by the band's ability to reinvent themselves without taking a complete 180º. If you haven't heard this band, and you like music that breaks barriers and presents something fresh and unique, well hell, what are you waiting for?

It's simply classic, and quite alluring, and if you close your eyes you can almost picture yourself in a darkened lounge in southeast Asia, beaded curtains surrounding you, smoking a hookah while the band plays on into the night.

The Fatal Flaw EP

Chris Estey — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:00:00 +0000

5.4

http://www.birdmanrecords.com/

sunups05sept.jpg

This is a five-song taste of a new power pop band that has a solid pedigree — Lucinda Kruy sung and played guitar with Luna Park and Dirty Bomb, and co-vocalist Brandy Foltz was in Dirty Bomb as well (and The Mellors, too), and Luna Park's bassist Arthur Hagman is here, too, with guitarist Matt Kramer from Kingpin Hayes, and drummer Kevin Bray from Delour and Wes Dando.

They've played shows with such quality bands as Slender Means and the Western States. They just had a show at Chop Suey with Hypatia Lake and Umber Sleeping, and will be playing the Rendezvous on September 21st.

It's hard to know when Lucinda is singing and when Brandy is singing, but seeing them live should help you figure that out. The point is, every song has wonderful interplay between them, as they trade off lyrics. The band is solid and Bray in particular keeps kicking up the energy behind the melodic vocal trade-offs, here shown best on the nervous noir-pop of the title track ("You are — you are — the fatal flaw in my design").

On "Arsenal," the band whips out imagery Elvis Costello would have used in his prime, about emotional bullets and intense queries about lovers' intentions ("Your eyes are like tiny daggers .your fingers . will I be cut down?"). Unfortunately, the smoothness of the vocals sometimes takes away from the power of the words. Lucinda and Brandy are fine as singers, but I'm not sure if I believe there's anything really at stake with what they're singing about.

As jaunty as these five songs are, I have the feeling it's still a little early for the band — that their best songs have yet to be written. Here's wishing them success long enough to do so.

As jaunty as these five songs are, I have the feeling it's still a little early for the band — that their best songs have yet to be written.

Escape From Dragon House

Chris Estey — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 07:00:00 +0000

8.3

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ALZHJ8/wwwthreeimagi-20

DengueFever05sept.jpg

I had a huge writer's block in the mid-90s. I'd written for The Rocket, and many other zines and tabloids off and on for years, but after a couple of years of working with the homeless, I found I didn't have much to say — there were better stories than mine, everywhere else.

I was the swing shift security guy in a low income housing tenement on Pike and Minor at the time, and one of the volunteers I worked with was a young Cambodian woman named Davi. We had gone to Olympia together to campaign on behalf of housing for the homeless, and in the van on the way back she told me a little about the horrors she had experienced under the Pol Pot regime — she had lost most of her family. I kept thinking about this one beautiful little life, going through such adversity to get through hell.

When we returned to the facility, we began writing up the protest event together for the building's newsletter — and I became unblocked. We wrote and edited the events of the day as we sat there together at a desk in the Jesuit Volunteer's office, and I found I could write again.

Well, that trickle of creativity that enabled me to write again was nothing compared to the awesome flood of joy and pain and energy flowing through this awesome multi-cultural mash-up of a record. Global label M80 has released the second album of Dengue Fever, what they call a "Cambodian psychedelic pop band," due out on September 13th. It combines all of the dirty funk, raw soul, cheesy pop, and solid R&B groove records you adore in your collection into one super-impressive whole.

Vocalist Ch'hom Nimol (who has performed for royalty in Cambodia), Zac and Ethan Holtzman (on guitar and Farfisa, respectively), Beck's sax player David Ralicke, Radar Brothers' bassist Senon Williams and drummer Paul Smith create a musical novel on the level of "The Clear Light Of Day" or "The Stars at Noon" — even if I can't understand most of the lyrics on the album.

Like those weathered Eastern European art-punk bands many other rock critics declare to be brilliant, for me it reminds me of an entire culture that was almost eliminated, but its origins are even more intense — of the existentially dispossessed finding its rhythm back into the center of the world.

If you buy this and can resist the pull of sound-film songs like "Tip My Canoe," with its layered keyboards and urgent female vocals, or the psycho-dramatic "Tap Water," which sounds like the resplendent pinnacle of a psychotronic musical, I'll wonder if your heart has been drained by so much soul-less American indie rock of the past ten years.

There are dark edges to the album, a sense of danger beneath the thrushes of organ — and the strange, claustrophobically violent imagery of the male-rapped "Made of Steam," for example. but as the record closes with "Hummingbird," a gracious Velvets-style ballad, it feels as if you have been transported back to a place of peace — tracers still intact, but ready for den-mat bliss-sleep.

It combines all of the dirty funk, raw soul, cheesy pop, and solid R&B groove records you adore in your collection into one super-impressive whole.