You could say this: “…sounds like the dream sequence soundtrack of a child who has just been read Edgar Allen Poe bedtime stories… a seductive work of quarreling melodic and dissonant interplay that is mysterious and intriguing.”*
Or you could just say “whoooooa” and move on, quickly, because this music is so genuinely eerie in its evocation of a sort of lounge-jazz netherworld that you’ll be jumping at shadows inside of five minutes under its intoxicating spell.
*(I realize that was cheating a bit, but the one-sheet Powderfinger Promotions sent in with this disc was one of the best-written I’ve ever received, so much so that it seems a waste to keep it to myself.)
Before going solo,
The title track opens things up in a shambolic limbo of off-kilter string-plucking (ukelele?) over haunted-house synth tones and thump-in-the-night percussion effects. The mid-song breakdown to whistly synth effects and spooky electronic blips only reinforces the macabre atmospherics -- and yet, there is a definite melodic thread weaving through the entire tune.
“Moss Points” is a more typical number -- if such a thing exists on an album like this -- a two-and-a-half minute vignette that veers from Phantom-ish opera organ to psychedelic lounge jazz, all the while bathing what feels suspiciously like a polka rhythm in melodic strangeness.
When the random-mystery-lady-speaking-French-or-something-like-it makes a cameo appearance halfway through “
Happy Halloween…!