Pitchfork

It's telling that the title track here is an instrumental. As a member of wacky Montreal popsters Think About Life, Miracle Fortress' Graham Van Pelt has already demonstrated his ear for keyboard textures (and a gung-ho live show). On his debut album as Miracle Fortress, Van Pelt plays all the instruments (though he's since recruited a touring band that includes Sunset Rubdown's Jordan Robson-Cramer), and he embraces sonic textures as the defining element of a sunny auteur-pop aesthetic.

Amid the post-Smile hoopla of 2004, I nervously predicted a Beach Boys backlash. Of course, I'm happy to report I couldn't have been more wrong: Panda Bear's everywhere-praised Person Pitch might be trippier, or the Crayon Fields' Animal Bells more charming, but Five Roses is as upfront as either about its debt to 2007's oft-name-checked Brian Wilson. Most overt is "Maybe Lately", which plays off the angelic verse melody of "Don't Worry Baby" before dissolving into shiny electronics. "And maybe when we're older I'll be less afraid/ And maybe when it gets colder you can come to stay," Van Pelt sings in a near-falsetto. Layers of high-pitched vocal harmonies likewise give a Pet Sounds sound to polished midtempo pop-rockers "Hold Your Secrets to Your Heart" and "Have You Seen in Your Dreams"; the sparkling arpeggios on "Beach Baby" could almost be a slowed-down recreation of the opening guitar chimes of "Wouldn't It Be Nice". You know, pleasant vibrations.

Miracle Fortress' tracks can sound as much like cybernetic love songs as teenage symphonies, suggesting another influence on Van Pelt's studio exercise: fellow texture-lover Brian Eno. Van Pelt's washes of dreamy synths and synth-like guitar leads over straight-ahead strums on opener "Whirrs" or the atmospheric "Little Trees" recall the way Eno achieved like-minded combinations during his 70s peak-- though without similarly commanding tunes or vocal presence, the comparison isn't entirely complimentary. Moreover, Van Pelt doing Eno is blander than the real dude's best: On songs like cloying "Blasphemy", the myriad electronic effects barely disguise what's basically lackluster acoustic rock. "I know always we're on different trains/ Sunday meet me, see me here again," a multi-tracked Van Pelt peeks out from the whirring soundscapes on "Poetaster".

Five Roses reveals Van Pelt as a talented producer who knows his way around summery pop songs. Still, the album at times indulges Van Pelt's ear for textures a bit much. Miracle Fortress' use of traditionally nonmusical sound effects-- cats meowing, birds chirping, or, on the title track, a propeller-like whir-- can end up being more memorable than the songs such noises adorn. In a perverse move, Van Pelt saves the strongest track, "This Thing About You", for last; bouncy tambourine and a gauze of effects-laden guitars put life into old love-song lyrical tropes. Like Eno, like Wilson, Miracle Fortress sounds best when the productions serve the songs.