Dodos - Visiter
This is the second release by San Francisco duo The Dodos, a band formed when solo folk singer-songwriter artist Meric Long teamed up with former progressive metal drummer Logan Kroeber. Their joining together seems to have been a fortuitous one, as the music that they make is warm and tuneful, yet still at times bracingly experimental and original.
Opening track ‘Walking’ lures the listener in with a simple folk song, backed by gentle banjo picking, and some lovely female harmony vocals all at a walking pace. The tempo is then raised when it merges into ‘Red and Purple’, one of several album highlights. It is here that one of the key features of The Dodos’ sound starts to emerge: their distinctive use of percussion. Throughout the album a whole series of different sounds are used to create the rhythmic backbone to the often delicate and beautiful melodies that they are supporting so you can hear wooden tippy-tappy drumstick beats on ‘Red and Purple’, ‘Eyelids’, and single ‘Fools’; a big booming beat on ‘Eyelids’ and the weird, New Orleans funeral march styled ‘It’s That Time Again’; a peculiar insistent rattle effect on ‘Joe’s Waltz’ and ‘The Season’, and countless more little clicks and bangs that go way beyond the normal drum-and-bass-guitar rhythm section.
In a similar vein, banjos, acoustic guitar, slide guitar, mandolins, little piano ‘chinks’ and the occasional helping of mariachi brass are all used at various points, producing a cumulative impression of a kind of bluegrass-tinged psych-folk with small dashes of alt-country or even (on ‘It’s That Time Again’, for example) trad jazz. You are never left feeling that a sound or an instrument has just been deployed “for effect” - the arrangements are invariably judicious and provide a very fitting setting for Long’s lovely warm, tuneful and mellow (yet at the same time strangely unassuming) vocal.
Thematically, many of the songs appear to be romantic, often in a lovelorn, unrequited kind of a way. ‘Joe’s Waltz’, for example, sings of “A weakness so strong you could wrap your arms around it”, while on ‘It’s That Time Again’ they plead “Be my love again / Together we could have a happy home”. One of the most straightforward tracks, lyrically, is the charming ‘Undeclared’. This cute his-and-hers alternating tale of mutual, seemingly requited, yet “undeclared” love (sample lines from him: “I like the way you hold your head / If your brother knew he’d want me dead”; and from her: “You come to me like out of a dream / And you run around like it just can’t be” was, for me, the highlight, and is programmed at a stage of this slightly-overlong album (track 13 of 14) where it provides a welcome change of pace as things begin to flag slightly.
What is less good about Visiter? Well, as I’ve said, it does slightly outstay its welcome with 14 tracks, by the time you are about three quarters of the way through some of that quirky percussion can start to wear a bit (the rattling sound, when used on 12th track ‘The Season’ somehow seems more irritating than in ‘Joe’s Waltz’ (track 5).
Overall, though, I think this is an interesting, intelligent album that pulls of the deft trick of being at the same time musically challenging yet still easy-on-the-ear. Don’t let the childish cover art fool you: this is the work of mature and talented musicians, a graceful and charming distillation of diverse strains of musical Americana that is at the same time pleasingly old fashioned, yet distinctly 21st century.