Pitchfork

The song "Vamos a la Playa" fell on the second half of the eponymous 2004 debut from giddy Seattle electro-maximalists United State of Electronica. Over the three years since the group's sole release to date, U.S.E. contributor Jason Holstrom has bided his time taking that suggestion to heart. Inspired by a trip to the Hawaiian islands followed by a few years in the studio (appropriately dubbed "The Cabana"), Holstrom's latest flight of fancy is The Thieves of Kailua, a musicological experiment as socks-and-sandals 50th state getaway, told with the instrumental precision of a native session man.

Although arguments could be made for Kailua's precursors in smart, luxuriant flip-flop-pop-- the Beach Boys' languid, sun-blanched harmonies, Ry Cooder's indigenous guitar-rock, the High Llamas' pith-helmet ethnography Hawaii-- Holstrom's songwriting and engineering keep the record from becoming a well-accompanied post-holiday slide-show. The tale is basic (love, Hawaiian-style) but as any travel agent or sunburned weekender will tell you, it's the journey itself that counts. "Crystal Green" opens the record with Holstrom gazing out of his plane window, noting the ocean's color. His weightless, echoed voice meshes with the thick swells of richly-recorded instrumentation around it: rolling bass drums, a guitar twanging a melody that recalls a TV Western, a whip-crack vocal effect straight from a Martin Denny or Esquivel record fade as the sound of a two-prop plane (a "real" plane, the liners indicate) fades into the horizon. A lap-steel guitar provides the atmosphere for "Hawaii She Calls", a late-album track that marks Holstrom's island conversion, and closer "Hula-Bye" is wordless acapella recalling the Pet Sounds box set extras.

In between, however, Holstrom recalls with verve a pretty eventful vacation: he's mugged, falls in love with a girl, and does significant amounts of lounging about. We hear what sounds like the resort concierge on "Welcome-Clouds Roll in", informing us "the ukelele band is gonna play, just like they do it every single day." Later, the sax-accompanied Grease-style "Under Setting Sun" is a lovers' duet, on which Holstrom is accompanied by his paramour ("All there is to do is sit and dream of her/ And I'll dream of him too"), but sings alone the chorus, the giddy realization that "I'm falling in love." The five-minute title suite contains Kailua's other significant occurrrence: after experiencing the opposite of hospitality, and describing the perpetrators, Holstrom laments: "Now do I look like the purist tourist/ Look at my skin so white/ To the thieves of the island I ain't no native, but that don't make it right."

Holstrom's wayfaring status on Kailua highlights the most significant connection between U.S.E. and his current conceit. Both aesthetically-divergent ventures rely on precisely-executed high-concept fantasy: U.S.E. was the work of some mashed-together Seattleite indie rockers pretending to be a German electro-outfit, and Kailua is a personal travelogue with a regionalized soundtrack. The fact that both records start sounding a bit samey after a few listens (the vocoder and uke have one thing in common: they both grate in large doses) indicates that Holstrom might just have a career here: making one-off, pleasure-seeking concept albums between production sessions for other artists. If his subsequent safaris are the enjoyable diversions the last two have been, why stop?