Dodos


(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )

Beware Of The Maniacs (2006), 6/10
Visiter (2008), 7.5/10
Time to Die (2009) , 5/10
No Color (2011), 6/10
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San Francisco's singer-songwriter Meric Long (a student of West African drumming and blues finger-picking) debuted with the solo EP Dodo Bird (2007).

The Dodos, the new moniker for Meric Long's project after joining forces with percussionist Logan Kroeber, recorded Beware Of The Maniacs (2006), a collection of humble acoustic folk ditties. The vocals on Chickens intone a blues lament but the guitar harks back to the intricate tapestries of Leo Kottke. Several of the songs display the same domestic quality (Bob) or are even simpler elegies (Beards). However sincere and personal these are, the genius of Long surfaces elsewhere. His African studies yield Neighbors, the hilarious novelty Horny Hippies, and especially the virulent and psychedelic The Ball. A knack for twisted arrangements helps a tactful trombone descend on the neurotic whisper of Nerds to lift it into a skewed ballad, and helps strings and cymbals lull the singalong of Elves. Trades & Tariffs ventures even further into eccentric singing, adding a virulent pace and another Kottke-esque guitar solo. Men closes the album with a synthesis of Long's two opposing tendencies: an effervescent rhythm and a poppy melody. While too skeletal to fully express the musician's ideas, the album revealed Long's melodic gift and his "ear" for unorthodox rhythms.

The Dodos (still the duo of guitarist Meric Long and drummer Logan Kroeber) redefined roots-rock for the age of post-rock on Visiter (Frenchkiss, 2008). The songs run the gamut from simple lo-fi folk tunes (Walking, Park Song, Ashley) to a drunk singalong with marching-band trombone (It's That Time Again), from post-bluegrass (the feverish and spastic six-minute rush of Paint the Rust, worthy of the Holy Modal Rounders) to relatively straightforward pop (Winter, a tuneful aria despite the oddly exotic accompaniment of ukulele-like guitar, tom-toms and horns, and Undeclared, with the catchiest vocal harmonies).
The duo's best ideas are reserved for the rhythms, like in the sudden batucada-like frenzy of Red And Purple, the insanely jubilant Fools, and in the surreal currents and countercurrents of The Season.
Jodi seems to fuse all these aspects in one memorable stylistic excursion, a breathless lullaby crucified to a manic drumming locomotive that manages to fuse blues and pop overtones the way Kevin Ayers or the Animal Collective could have done at the peak of their psyched-out creative periods.
The Dodos roam more metaphysical ground in the seven-minute centerpiece, Joe's Waltz, that initially is a spaced-out chant relying on little more than semi-tribal drums and dissonant piano notes but then abruptly fires up into a bluesy garage rave-up, and in the seven-minute closer, God?, another stylistic hybrid that manages to bridge Indian, native America and Irish influences, a sort of jig, pow-wow and raga all in the same place.
They always seem to stop when they get to the edge of the abyss, afraid of flying (stylistically speaking). The best songs contain some degree of verve and chaos, but neither ever gets out of control.
The length of the songs testifies to the diversity of the album: they range from less than a minute to more than seven. There are hardly two songs that can be said to be similar. Rarely has introspective music yielded such a spectrum of musical ideas.

Time to Die (Frenchkiss, 2009), that added electric vibraphonist Keaton Snyder to the line-up, was a lot less original, despite the more professional arrangements that yielded Troll Nacht, Fables and Small Deaths. The duration of the songs talks to the effort to homogenize the music: they all fall between four and six minutes.

No Color (Wichita, 2011) avoided the shortcomings of the previous album but still failed to recapture the magic of Visiter. Black Night, that evoked the lunatic arias and arrangements of Kevin Ayers, and the breezy folk-pop ditty Sleep represented the best that the duo had to give. Going Under, on the other hand, tried too hard to reconcile tune and instruments, thereby exposing a fundamental collision between melody and rhythm. A cubistic version of vintage Merseybeat like Good and a neurotic revision of the Kinks canon like Hunting Season are intriguing but rather cold. The contrast is better assimilated and exploited by the romantic When Will You Go, frolicking at an irregular trotting pace, and by the syncopated clockwork of Don't Stop.

(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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