Entanglements

Parenthetical Girls | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 9, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: TOMLAB
• ASIN: B001COB39K
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,720 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

3 stars out of 5 -- "A grimly satisfying mix of perversion and symphonic decadence....The impeccable arrangements, wormy melodies, and jarring carnal imagery get the point across." --Spin

Product Description

Their third album and first for Tomlab is an eleven song linear narrative of moral ambiguities, set to an elaborately orchestrated olio of modern classical and timeworn, traditional American pop forms. They borrow from the string swept sentimentality of Van Dyke Parks, Scott Walker, Jack Nitzsche, and Burt Bacharach, then introduce the influence of more formidable strains of modern classical composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Philip Glass, and Gavin Bryars. The result is a confluence of cerebral and sentimental disparities; sensually unsettling. Orchestral pop, crooned and cooed in falsetto.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love in the time of Quantum Uncertainty, November 3, 2009

By 

David M. DeLeon (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Entanglements (Audio CD)

You can't call Entanglements a concept album, the term has been used too often on things way less clever. It's more like a series of dramatic monologues, or a poem sequence set to music. In that sense it's similar to their excellent but somewhat less cohesive previous album Safe As Houses. The viewpoints in that album shifted over the course of ten tracks from mother to daughter to sister, but Entanglements, it seems, has one narrator. The actual details of the story being told are intentionally ambiguous (how sure are we that the narrator is female? are the lovers related?), wrapped up in Zac Pennington's elliptical, witty and utterly delightfully lyrics -- and I know if I started quoting bits of wordplay I'd never stop, so better just to listen to the whole thing yourself and pick out your own favorite lines.

What we do know is that the story hinges on two lovers, one much older than the other, starting that initial rush of emotion (Four Words), and from there we bounce forward in time, as they meet again and again and grow more entangled. There are moments of guilt and regret, what might be a pregnancy scare, abandonment, and finally that always awkward long-after encounter. ("Entanglement" is a term in quantum physics for the way two particles, though long separated, still affect each other.)

Which is to say nothing of the lush ornamental arrangements, the Bacharach and Mancini-like rondos, the cover of "Windmills of your Mind," the Elfman-esque coda. "A Song for Ellie Greenwich" is easily one of the most unique and catchiest songs in the genre, with the brass notes marching and the strings and flutes dancing and Pennington's voice rolling all around it happy as a clam and just slightly sinister.

This is one of those rare albums that reveals more and more the more you listen to it. Not everyone is going to have the patience for it, but for those that do, the rewards are well worth it.