Customer Reviews

Albemarle Sound

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ok, that heading was just stupid, this is not pot music. This is one of the best records to come out since " The Beach boys love you". It's sooo beautiful and even though you might say this is sixties music, it's a very modern record. It's so uplifting to hear these young people with such a genuine love and respect for music. If Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson ever worked together, this is what may have come out. But if you haven't seen this band live, do so now. They are even better live!

Gary Olson and cohorts have composed, for this music aficionado's well tuned ear, some of the most lovely melodies and pop tunes to come out since.. well, since Belle & Sebastian. I wish them a long and prosperous career, rife with the lush melodic genius so generously shared with us here. One of the best albums of 1998. Truly a hidden treasure.

The Albemarle Sound, be it body of water, quality of music or the latest album by the Ladybug Transistor, is a sound that seems at once familiar and yet strange. Why? Well, the Ladybug Transistor goes back to the late '60s to write in the baroque pop style that utilizes arrangements, rhythms and instrumentation that have vanished from the pop music scene, things taken from classical music and even early marching band music (well, that's what I get out of it). In a time when the off-beat is in every single song, when something "slightly funky" has become the boring norm, the Transistor have gone back to that short time in the '60s when songs were really crafted and put together, not just jammed out and recorded for posterity. It may make for an unsettling experience at first, because it certainly doesn't sound like a lot of contemporary popmusic...but it'll be well worth it. Horns ain't for ska and swing and funk anymore (again). There's nothing wrong with going back and picking up on a great thread that stopped prematurely, and the Ladybug Transistor are one of the great bands doing just that with well-orchestrated pop/soft-rock with a touch of pretty psych.

The Albermarle Sound is just another pit stop of sound for the Ladybugs. Although, i think this round is not so moog-ish, and more classical sounding than say Beverly Atonale. It is a very dreamy album, the songs are so silly, but poetic. They do not try to come up with the most catchy tunes, they would rather build a song and show how beautifully it works together. I have great faith in the Ladybug Transistor, i feel that their music is inspired and original, idiosyncratic and universal....so get that loan and hear the Albermarle Sound.

This album is a definite step up from their previous releasees, in terms of production and song-crafting. There are some gems of songs on this album, but there are also some less than stellar efforts. "The Great British Spring" reminds me of being in a park in London on a sunny day. The instrumentation gives a 60's retro feel to the songs, with pianos, guitars, horns, and drums. "Like a Summer Rain" and "Oceans in the Hall" are also great. However, "Today Knows" is a slow ballad which may drone on too long for some, and "The Swimmer" doesn't seem to match up with the quality of the other songs on this album. As a whole, the album works pretty well, and is one of my favorites.

This is one of the best albums i've heard in months. The Albemarle Sound features lush arrangements and beatles-influenced hooks; but there's also a subtle quirkiness that makes every song memorable. I really can't say enough about this record: the recording, performance and songwriting are all very well thought out - but not in an annoying "muso" sort of way. It references the past without sounding derivative and it utilizes *ridiculous* lyrical themes without making me cringe. I don't know how they did it. Every motarded guitar tone, silly piano fill, and seemingly unnecessary overdub makes me marvel at what a wonderful song i am listening to. Bravo. The first time i heard "Meadowport Arch" i giggled for 20 minutes. Tempo: March Slow. . . .

Ladybug Transistor is a chamber pop band who came and went in the late 1990s. I got this 1999 when it came out, played it6 a few times and all but forgot it until I rediscovered it in my collection.

This is not a sunny, chipper take on Chamber Pop. Albemarle Sound mines a soft, slightly down beat take on the genre. The stings and horns are ready for the hearing. But they are mixed into extremely gentle, sometimes weepy-eyed tracks about love and loss. Listen to "Here Comes The Rain," which slyly mixes a drippy sentimentality with instrumental craft.

Personally, I find this album a bit of a downer. If there is really such a thing as sunshine pop, this is that for a stormy, claustrophobic day behind closed doors and looking out wet foggy windows. Given a choice I would shoot for the upbeat jazzy sound of a band like Swandive, but that is a sheer matter of taste.

If you like the more vulnerable side of this music, you won't go wrong with Ladybug Transistor

How a band not part of the Elephant 6 contigent can manage to sound more Elephant 6 than the Elephant 6ers is as worthy a mystery to ponder as "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop," and equally rewarding to the (aural) taste-buds. The best of a Liliputian mini-era in sixties helium-balloon-inhaling psych-pop, distilled, re-roto-rootered for smug heard-it-all 1990s turniphead attitudes, and gloriously placed in the world for your chewing and bubble-blowing pleasure... Why are you reading this? Buy this CD immediately or suffer eternal hemiocorporectomy.

Bound to be the best CD of 1999. The Ladybugs compete with the likes of The Beach Boys and The Beatles with this incredible release.

there's some great moments on this record ("six times" -- wow!), and the band's refusal to believe that it could be anything but 1966 is admirable. but "pet sounds" this ain't....