Audio alchemist and one half of the gorgeously fragmentary pop team
The Books,
Nick Zammuto makes his solo debut with this full-length under his last name. There's a roving chaos to the disc, not completely divorced from the springy shifts of his other band, but definitely a different animal. Album opener "Yay" suggests a logical progression from the lighthearted cut up mentality of
The Books with overdriven drums and tremeloed vocals pushing the driving melodies along. Other voices wail out in the background as anthemic keyboards explode out of the choruses. The song is brilliant, capturing some midway between
Sung Tongs-era
Animal Collective and
The Books' high water mark album
The Lemon Of Pink. Unlike the sample-happy, often instrumental fragmentary pop
the Books are known for, vocals take a frontseat on here, almost every song revolving around heavily processed singing. "Groan Man, Don't Cry" comes off like
Bon Iver's cameos on
Kanye tracks with it's vocoded vocals. "F U C-3PO" has a similar robotic menace to it. This song and a few others fall into the final product of modernized prog rock, futuristic synth stabs aggressively competing with acoustic guitars like a cousin of
Battles. "Zebra Butt" takes the vocoding one step further by replacing processed human vocals with a computerized female voice reciting lyrics. The same gift for arrangement that
Nick Zammuto put to incredible work on previous productions is still present here, if less overtly. The string bass and found-sound bicycle bell melodies of "The Shape of Things To Come" dance with spare hand-clap rhythms. The production makes the song and it's an example of tension building and releasing nicely. ~ Fred Thomas