Customer Reviews

Entanglements

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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.