MUSIC REVIEW . Perfume Tree . Feeler

by Kris   ⋅   December 1, 2005   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

Sometimes I buy albums for the trippy cover art or odd titles. Prior to listening stations and ease of .mp3 sampling, that practice resulted in serendipitous yays or yeechs. Perfume Tree’s Feeler turned out to be a major yay with its bounding bass and twitchy treble elements escorting songstress Jane Tilley’s choir-pitch melodies. Her voice familiarly floats angelic amidst the technoid twirls and bopping bloops, offering gorgeous contrast. Although they are decidedly electronica, their sound is pleasantly couchable. They’re ultra-mellow-fied with droning sustained background chords only moderately shifting, as in Flooded. Warm Sun Fingers’s heavily echoed vocals and percussion/snare drum attacks are like being suspensefully slow-motion chased through a dream’s damp forest. Can’t You? and Been There lead a military march with battle beats and drum rolls. The tracks are hauntingly pretty layered instrumentals, even though they employ otherwise irritating clips such as Instantaneous’s wasp-buzzing backwards guitar and Too Early, Too Late’s stuttering static and helicopter-blade whupping sounds.

Perfume Tree also incorporates incredibly simple yet unintelligibly delivered lyrics concerning natural emotional ethereal heights and depths to add to their “I’m escaping to Atlantis” and “I could die right now and not care ‘cos I’m with you” feel. From Both Oceans:

The view from up here is the widest I’ve ever seen/ the miles of country, of uninterrupted scenery. The view from up here goes on forever and ever/ the miles of paradise, like being in someone else’s photograph. There’s no city blocks, just cliff tops, no traffic lights, no video arcades/ just me and my love on a beautiful, beautiful day.

Their overall sound is mellow-hype, organic-urban, and can be described best by their simple yet awfully unaesthetic disc label stamp: “photoshopped oceanic”. Thank goodness we’re just listening.

About the Author:

Kris Kobayashi-Nelson will listen to anything once. Her favorites include Cocteau Twins, Cardigans, Mixel Pixel, Deerhoof, Fiona Apple, Portishead, Sneakerpimps, Sonny Rollins, the Pixies, Autechre… but she has been known to groove to footfalls through November leaves, zipper pulls in the dryer, or ice clinking in a Summer glass.