The Smiles & Frowns - Guardian New Band Of The Day - 27th July 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
The Smiles and Frowns (No 834)
This folkadelic pop duo draw you into another time and place with lovingly recreated reminders of a bygone age
Paul Lester
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 July 2010 17.32 BST
Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona.
The lineup: Adam Mattson (vocals, instruments), Christopher James (instruments).
The background: The Smiles and Frowns are a little bit different. They're an American duo from Phoenix whose self-titled debut album recalls late-60s psychedelia and acid-era folk-pop, both the UK and US varieties. Their music recalls Syd Barrett, White Album Beatles and the oompah pop of the Kinks and the Bonzos: the mode is jaunty, the mood brisk with an undertow of, not melancholy or malice, but something beginning with "m" that conjures macabre magic and morose mayhem. But it's not just jolly: when they add strings, you think of the lush late-60s baroque pop of Left Banke and their lesser-known ilk.
Their eight-track, 20-minute mini-album was designed as a series of "haunted train-ride songs, children's theme music songs and psychedelic science-fiction songs". Mattson explains: "When I close my eyes, I see cartoons playing in the darkness of my mind, so I usually write about those." That'll explain the one about the marionette trying to escape his puppet world and the one about a boy called Cornelius who communicates with animals, plants and insects with his magical flute. It can get dark in there: as the album proceeds, it gets progressively more eerie. It opens with Sam, a gentle psych-folk ballad that draws you into another time and place – 1968 Haight-Ashbury, probably. Cornelius negotiates a path between Macca-ish melody and Ringo-esque whimsy, while The Memory Man teeters between Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Madcap Barrett, with its references to devils and clowns.
Huevos Rancheros is the turning point, and by March of the Phantom Faces you're led, via a creepy church organ, into haunted house or fairground nightmare territory. When the Time Should Come sounds like one of those one-off bubblegum psych hits from 1969 by long-forgotten groups with names like Cheasapeake Jukebox Band or Philwit and Pegasus. Mechanical Songs is weird city with its phased vocals. Album closer The Echoes of Time goes from jug band blues – where the stripped-bare arrangement gives it a Syd-ishly stark and simple quality of strangeness – to a more ornate, string-laden piece that is quite lovely. The Smiles and Frowns take their name from religious symbology and say things such as: "Duality is the source of life, because all things must have an opposing force in order to exist; a smile and a frown are perfect symbols to represent duality." But don't let that put you off, because their songs lovingly recreate a bygone age.
The buzz: "Imaginative psych-folk-pop that reminds us of White Album-era Beatles, Syd Barrett, Oliver Postgate, Curt Boettcher and 60s west coast pop" – Alt Sounds.
The truth: You'll smile more than frown at their charming folkadelic pop.
Most likely to: Appeal to urban spacemen.
Least likely to: Do a gig in a disused fairground – too scary.
What to buy: The Smiles and Frowns is released by aA on 16 August.
File next to: Beatles, Syd Barrett, Bonzo Dog Band, Curt Boettcher.
Links: myspace.com/thesmilesandfrowns
