Pitchfork

So Ris Paul Ric's Purple Blaze has little or nothing to do with Purple Haze or "Purple Haze" or Purple Rain-- it's also got surprisingly little in common with Dischord's D.C. boys, considering that Ris Paul Ric happens to be former Q and Not U guitarist chRIS PAUL RIChards, capitalizing (get it, capitals?) on the band's recent breakup to go his own way: The album's 12 tracks seem like the byproduct of crooning jammy-clad on snow days spent waiting for your beard to grow-- such far, stripped-down acoustic cries are they from Q and Not U's post-hardcore shtick. But even when especially plaintive, Richards' oft-operatic pipes are still recognizable: his breathy ups and downs-- accompanied by electronic artist, Alien8's Tim Hecker this time-- are nothing short of lovely, even sentimental and dimmed.

If this smells like Postal Service, it isn't. The Richards/Hecker brand of electro-glum isn't techno-bumped, or over-blipped: It's bird calls and waterfalls and whistling-- the album's title track and opener, "Purple Blaze", foreshadows as much with its exhaled list of images, among them, "the ordinary truth." It's right on-- for the most part it's just Richards and that well-worn acoustic, the stuff of Simon and Garfunkel fanboydom-- but speaking of Jimi Hendrix ("Purple haze all in my brain/ Lately things just don't seem the same"), the world of Purple Blaze is some weird rainforesty, jungly one that's difficult to pinpoint exactly; it's hard to feel like you've ever completely gotten it, which doubles as both strength and shortcoming.

There are missteps, most notably "Run Up Wild on Me", which is what would happen if Michael Jackson/Prince/Justin Timberlake inseminated triplets in the same hipsterette, and music-for-aromatherapy "D Y C N" and "P L B Z", which can't hold candles to the album highlights such as the chillingly gorgeous "Daft Young Cannibals" or "Purple Blaze". The majority of tracks fall squarely between transcendent and lacking-- stuff for café open mics, like the snored "The Sleeparound" and the partially whistled "I Wish You Love Me", aren't groundbreaking but pleasant enough. That "finch" Richards warns about in "Purple Blaze" turns up on "Colonialism", kamikaze chirping.

Speaking of birds, the cover art's made to resemble a Penguin 20th Century Classic paperback: RIS PAUL RIC in caps, Purple Blaze italicized beneath it. Birds dream about their songs to better remember them in waking life, and in the end, this is what Purple Blaze seems like. In "Hanging From the Grapevines", Richards speaks of "sending out songs beyond my control"; the chorus repeats itself till it's this perfect chant-- "like the dream you won't remember"-- and that's just it: Purple Blaze is Ris Paul Ric's fragmented bird-dream recalled on too little sleeping, packing in Q and Not U's volatility, lacking only its pulled-togetherness, forecasting a wealth of good to come.

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