Pitchfork

The quality of a record doesn't always correlate very well with the amount of stuff that can be said about it, which might prove an issue here. But it seems-- both journalistically and morally-- sort of just wrong to set a critical land speed record talking about an album as solid-but-not-brilliant as this one is, so we'll try to give it some thought.

Zelienople are a pretty good band from Chicago, and they've released the very badly titled Pajama Avenue on Loose Thread Recordings, a label that's been taking care of the city's spacier bands for a few years now. They're not really a post-rock band, or a slowcore band, or a shoegazer band, but they sound like a lot of each, and also like a lot of those damned good 'lost generation' bands-- bands like Bark Psychosis and Disco Inferno, and records like Slowdive's last one. They're equally likely to remind you of a less gritty Crescent, a less earthy Movietone, a more abstracted American Analog Set, or a sleepier Bedhead. Or the big clumsy tag we'll all follow: Yo La Tengo's And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. Only turn down the sweetie pop and crank up the steely eyes.

All of which is to say that Zelienople are infinitely mellow, spacy and subdued. Drums sketch out hypnotic heartbeat rhythms and build splashes of cymbal; bass pulses steadily along; guitar echoes and swells in cushy pads and drones; organs hum; sometimes a heavily reverbed clarinet winds meditatively through. A significant percentage of Zelienople's instruments are filtered through delay effects, and one of their many skills is near-perfect coordination between the blissy major-key bits of this and the more darkly hypnotic bits, which keeps a helpful internal tension running through each of these tracks.

More to the point, though, they've settled on a workable sound and they use it quite effectively. For some of us, you understand, it's difficult not to like this sort of thing in the first place: it's a beautiful and massively rewarding trick of scale. Sounds move by in such contemplative slow motion that the slightest bits of texture seem like revelations-- every sound accrues this layer of determination and intensity around it. The whole thing can drift peacefully by, but a little attention reveals an immensely dramatic topography of texture and movement. The songs pulse and plod so subtly onward that when things click and shift within them, it can seem like an earthquake.

And Zelienople, despite their embarrassing album-naming gaffe, are really quite terrific with the execution of this sort of thing. Which is what tempts that aforementioned critical speed record: yes, they're good, no argument. If you like this sort of thing, you'll be anything from pleased to outright captivated. If you don't, move along. The other possibility is that perhaps you do like this sort of thing, but have burned out on its creeping growth through the indie underbrush-- in which it's my considered opinion that you'd still quite enjoy this but should maybe take the cue to move on anyway. Personally, I'll be keeping this one around: it'll come in handy some night when the indie stoners are over.