You might expect extraordinary things to emerge, blinking into the light out of the back-bedroom musical projects of Athens, GA; after all, the city has already given us the likes of R.E.M., Elephant 6 and The B52s. Larches proves to be in keeping with such music traditions and the wonderfully named Attack of the Telephones is a strange and scintillating sonic beast indeed.
For those still fixated on such petty distinctions as genres, we are in the realms of alt-rock. Still, the additional genre steals that go into the mix, a dash of dream-pop shimmer, jangling indie guitars, psychedelic mystique, and pop addictiveness, are what really make this album stand out.
The opener, “Vessels,” blends anthemic builds with blissed-out haze, shoegazing sonic weight, and spacious lulls, and is a great introduction to what is to follow. And what follows is a deft and delicious journey through some psyched-out soundscapes. “Sleeve,” with its indie licks and lush atmospheres, sits somewhere between mainstream accessibility and outsider chic, “No Gods” is cool and claustrophobic, the spirit of The Doors rewritten for a heavier rock approach, and “Islands” shows that understated pop is not out of bounds with this eclectic and eloquent album.
And lyrically, too, nothing is as straightforward as it seems. We find ourselves in a hallucinogenic landscape of isolation, loneliness, and hope, inhabited by painted corpses, cowering gods, and friends transformed into telephones, apparently. Well, that certainly beats boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy tries to understand what went wrong…over three chords…on an acoustic guitar!
Buy Attack of the Telephones, it’ll make your Christmas! It’ll make your year!
