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Reviews:
- - - - - San Francisco Bay Guardian Every time I listen to the Natural Dreamers' self-titled album, I'm reminded that Deerhoof are everywhere these days Ð the band's new album, Milk Man, has gotten reviewed in Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, and its members also work in local bands the Curtains, Nervous Cop, and Gorge Trio. The Natural Dreamers also owe something to Deerhoof Ð specifically the band's two guitarists, John Dieterich and Chris Cohen, who, along with Dilute drummer Jay Pellicci, make up the trio. The truth is, I like this CD better than the already widely hailed Milk Man. The Natural Dreamers' specialty is tangled, thorny, choppy instrumental rock that's in the same ballpark as U.S. Maple, or maybe Captain Beefheart without the blues influence Ð or Deerhoof without the sunny pop vocals. They love testing listeners with awkward but precisely timed stop-and-start interplay that would be irritating except that they set up moments when they give in and reward us with an amazing riff or a melody that makes us shake our head and laugh because we never saw it coming, as on "The Singer" and "Professional Dreamer." The recording sounds great, and for a band that never play power chords and hardly ever play in straight 4/4, they rock hard. If people had any taste, Natural Dreamers would be on the cover of Guitar magazine instead of another in the continuing series of Satriani disciples. - - - - - Logo Magazine Natural Dreamers are a trio comprising members of Deerhoof, Dilute and The Curtains, fiddling with awkward time signatures and arrhythmic messages relayed through the medium of one drum kit and two guitars. Its success or failure lies in how well the dichotomy between simplicity and complexity is handled, in whether free-associative jazz can be made not just to co-exist with, but to work alongside and bolster the lonesome clangour of the Delta bluesman who sounds like he's been transplanted from a 1930's cotton field and forced to learn the work of Glenn Branca and Liars in a day. There are no external reference points for this music, it makes sense only of itself; but is it a success? Unequivocally, yes. (****) - - - - - Delusions of Adequacy It happened so quickly that you might not have noticed it, but in the quietest revolution ever, the avant-garde end of experimental rock has managed to slide nearly into the center lane of independent music. Sure, we always had Sonic Youth and Captain Beefheart as the primers for those who wanted to write songs with wildly elastic structures and few concessions to tonality, but most of those working on the more abstract end of the spectrum tended to retain a sort of marginalized notoriety of the sort typified by bands like the Residents, a group weird enough that everyone has heard of it but so puzzlingly esoteric that few aside from the obsessives have more than a passing knowledge of their its work. Now, however, with the likes of Erase Errata, Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, and Wolf Eyes garnering near unanimous underground (and even some mainstream) acclaim, noise is in and threatening to make any overt nods to melody seem as archaic as parlor music. And while they don't make quite the hard turn toward abstraction that some of the aforementioned do, Natural Dreamers cast its lot with the sonic explorers with its debut release Admittedly, the potted plant and pure white backdrop of the cover seem to suggest the domestic tranquility of a reformed 60s sunshine-pop band more than a trio of free-form fanatics, making the actual contents somewhat startling in their meandering abrasiveness. There are some Deerhoof references to be made (as John Dieterich and Chris Cohen happen to share guitar duties in that band, as well) but that band's trademark avant-bubblegum is here subverted in favor of the exclusion of almost all concessions to traditional structure except in the most fleeting of moments. More developed melodies do wander in and out at times, but most of the songs fall somewhere between post-rock instrumentals and impressionistic avant-garde tinkering. Maybe most unusual is the almost complete reliance on little more than the frantic interweaving of John Dieterich and Chris Cohen's guitars over drummer Jay Pellicci's turn-on-a-dime drumming. Where many bands go for aural saturation to overwhelm their listener, the aesthetic here is founded upon using structure to dazzle and confuse. And for the most part, it works "The Singer" screeches forward with Southern-rock guitar solos, only to abandon them for pulsing chords and downright pretty electric picking. "The Golden Pond" is nearly as picturesque as its title suggests, with guitar lines lazily rising and falling until collapsing into disorder. "Arthur" is a carnival ride/gypsy boogie that lurches forward and back before dissolving into a cloud of complex guitar patterns and sour scales. The spazz-core turned light jazz of "The Natural" is, in one song, the study in contrast that typifies the entire disc. Throughout, the mood is in constant flux, from frenzied to pensive, poignant to restless, often within the course of one track, leaving little rhyme or reason to the predict just where the next move will be. Sure, it's a clichŽ, but this is the type of music where the listener can genuinely find something new nearly every time the album's chaotic clatter fills a room, as the complexities of the song structures don't lend themselves to easy translation. There is liberating power in a stray guitar line and spastic drum roll, and such freedom is not only the modus operandi here, it's the album's true saving grace. It's not always easy to follow, and that's the most salient point. The listeners are asked to surrender their higher functions to the cacophonous void, ensuring that the music's constituent elements are universal enough to appeal to a barely realized internal logic. In all honestly, it's hard to know what the most reasonable diagnostic criteria is to separate genius and confirming pure grating noise, as such standards are likely to change not only from listener to listener but even in the same listener depending on mood. What makes one bleating guitar more interesting or valid than another? What is the proper balance between innovation and simple artistic excess? Where does concept reasonably trump creation? Natural Dreamers don't answer those questions, but their album is posited upon all of them. Listen, and you might come up with some answers. - - - - - Lost At Sea Instrumental albums have a propensity to become boring. Most of the time they are endeavors that primarily focus on musicianship and intellectualism rather than fun. The songs are typically long, drawn out, expansive exercises in capturing mood or atmosphere, which is all fine and good in small doses, but after a while does become tiring. Knowing that the Natural Dreamers feature members of Deerhoof and Dilute, I wasn't expecting this type of album. Thankfully, they didn't disappoint. Their eponymous release is not of the self-indulgent, dull sort, but rather an album where each song is torn between vigorous all-out melody and chaotic instrumental noise. The album begins and ends with two short blurbs of sound that ephemerally set and end the pace for a record filled with musical comings-and-goings, ups-and-downs, and starts-and-stops. Natural Dreamers create an instrumental gibberish; however, amidst the noise is a musical language sensible to the ear. The guitars and drums sound as if they are all running in place, acting on their own accord, but then there are moments of collision, where they come together, teasing the listener with melody, and then momentarily indulging them in it. Throughout the record there is a tension between free form chaos and tuneful control. Where one song, or part of a song, deconstructs, there is another element already developing to repeat the process again. "The Big Switch" is the most infectious - foot tapping in a non-conformist way - track on the album with its steady rolling of drum beats and upbeat guitar playing. It sounds like the backbone for a great pop song waiting to be written, but the tight melody of "The Big Switch" disintegrates into musical avant-garde meanderings on "Cone Corners". Characteristically the form tightens in spots and then loosens again as the drums and guitars slow to collapse. The formula where construction yields deconstruction shows itself on other tracks such as "The Natural," "Bingo," and "Hot C." On "Diamond Mines," Natural Dreamers use wavering guitars that are interrupted by both conscientious plucking and uninhibited slashing followed by a slowing in tempo. By song's end the guitars are no longer syncopated, but at odds instead. "Arthur" begins with a playful rhythm that is almost childish in tune but then develops into a more mature noise using repetition and guitar fuzz that builds and finally breaks. Needless to say there is a lot going here. It is impressive how effortlessly the instruments come together and seconds later so effortlessly come apart. Natural Dreamers keep the album interesting with their border crossing between order and disarray. The album won't hit you on a gut-level, but it's compelling musically, always changing and moving backwards and forwards. It's nice to listen to something that takes a little work to interpret, yet still remains unpretentious but experimental. - - - - - indieworkshop.com You know the drill. Three guys get together and play music as if they aren't even in the same room together. Start, stop, clang, crash, skree, pop... So many bands, so many songs that blend together, into an endless parade of jazz chords and buzzing amplifiers and broken snare heads. No more, I say, no more. We have the Natural Dreamers to thank for that. Part Don Caballero (minus the macho nut clutching) and part Hella (minus nothing), the Natural Dreamers have refreshed a tired genre by doing absolutely nothing new with it. Shocking but true. The Natural Dreamers operate on pretty much the same set-up. They got your two guitars, mildly bright and crunchy. And then there are your drums, played at two speeds, fast or faster. Song structure is implied more than expressed. But it is there and it is so internalized in the music and the playing that it seeps out of the speakers and into your ears. That is what separates this experience from those instrumental CDs that have been heard and promptly forgotten. May they rest in peace, whatever their names were... There are standout moments on this record, but to describe them would be ludicrous. "You know, the kick hits three times and then clang and then whirr". Doesn't work in a verbal context either, so don't feel bad. You just have to experience this stuff for yourself. Go out and live your life. Go wear big kid pants. That sort of stuff... I will say that I am a sucker for this stuff anyways. I love my Storm and Stress and nothing is better than Volta Do Mar or A Minor Forest. But this is something new yet old, borrowed yet blue...you know what I mean. - - - - - Splendid EZine Natural Dreamers share two members with Deerhoof, and if you, dear reader, are willing to indulge the sort of quasi-scientific experiment conducted by all critics, which compares and contrasts two bands with one or more common member, then yes -- thanks to John Dieterich and Chris Cohen and their way with the drunk-as-fuck guitar non-riff, Natural Dreamers share Deerhoof's giddy nausea at the prospect of organizing sound into pop, and each resulting "song" is mangled accordingly. However, without the histrionics of lead singer/circus freak Satomi Matsuzaki to goad the band into dramatic moments of gleeful carnage, and perhaps because of a conscious choice not to sound exactly like Deerhoof, Natural Dreamers come off as that band's more contemplative, mature, spindly cousin. The songs are still short, their sections still hyper-compressed, their transitions still disorienting, but playful moments of silence and the abstract, off-time drumming of wild card Jay Pellicci bring added nuance to Dieterich and Cohen's dueling guitars, which are actually less dueling this time around than they are spatial and conceptual paintbrushes. Tracks like "Cone Corners" and "The Golden Pond" hit subdued beats before zipping off on unexpected tangents, careful to slowly pick out obscure processions of discordant notes, which they can then use as jumping-off points for later hooks. The hooks themselves are playful and sassy ("The Natural") or ethereal and elliptical ("Alphabet") or in-your-face ("Diamond Mines"), but always undercut by an out-of-place flurry of notes here or a sudden stop there, or a methodical procession of whacked-out chords everywhere else. Take, for instance, "The Natural" as a representative ride: from nervous, Slint-y opening to chirping, Asian-sounding, happy-happy riff to noisy intermission to dreamy post-intermission to muscle-bound but still abstract coda, all in under three minutes and with only two pedal-less guitars and a drum set to do the work. Still, because of the band's limited instrumental pallette or their willingness to take spacious breaths once in a while between deconstructed riff-fests, the album radiates a sort of fractured, avant-garde dignity missing from other hyperactive albums -- say, Deerhoof's Reveille, for convenience's sake. Dieterich and Cohen might sound somewhat insane wherever they appear, but here the insanity could be mistaken for wisdom -- which, after all, isn't a bad mistake to make. - - - - - Dusted Magazine In one of the earliest sequences of Richard Linklater's freaked-out cine-dream, 2001's Waking Life, a rotoscoped Tosca Tango Orchestra are filmed in practice, rehearsing a pleasant weird-tango number in its entirety, finishing with a smiling discussion of amendments and improvements. Over the din of shuffling sheet music, the accordion player suggests the cellist to play a little more "detached," "wavy," and "slightly out of tune." She responds with a smile and adjusts the line, adding vibrato and something less definable, an extra millisecond of her attention, perhaps. The line sounds better subjectively, and even objectively it sounds different. I bring up this film sequence conjointly with San Francisco's Natural Dreamers self-titled album because, in addition to my reverential valuation of both, there is a similarity between the colorful experimentation of each. Calling the instrumental Natural Dreamers (at times) "detached," "wavy," or "slightly out of tune" would be fair, if not accurate. I am also assuming Ð imagining, really Ð a likeness in the comfortable compositional approach on the Dreamers' end of things. The trio features well-studied members of the Bay Area experimental scene. Deerhoof guitarists Chris Cohen and John Dieterich join forces with Dilute drummer Jay Pellicci. As a valuable aside, I want to note Cohen's participation as the sole guitarist in the bizarreness that is The Curtains, a group with Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier on keyboards. And Pellicci is responsible for recording Deerhoof (and Erase Errata's throbbing At Crystal Palace), which is no small feat. It's the smoothness of this Natural Dreamers full-length, in conjunction with the members' oft-crossing paths, which leads me to imagine their rehearsals seeped in the same friendly, understanding communion Linklater captured. As with the achingly derived layers of pop experimentation in Waking Life, the Natural Dreamers most transcendent moments are often the most confusing. On "Hot C," each member is, for a while, in a world of his own. Obstinate with each separate pattern, the guitars slash on one side and pluck on the other, all while Pellicci cycles through a sixteenth-note-heavy hymnal of tom-tom and snare splatters. This isn't to say Natural Dreamers smart-pop crusade employs noise as a medium at any point (experimental music can be too-easily assumed noisy, and setting the Natural Dreamers apart seems worthwhile). In fact, the balance of clashing atonalities and cleaner-feeling harmonies is keenly equalized throughout. "Golden Pond" does this best, growing from spaciously picked chords into a narcotic repetition, loud and discordant, but never abrasive. Another sky-highlight, the opiate marathon, "The Natural," finds both Cohen and Dieterich flossing in and out of unified silences and alien chords. Again, Pellicci's entrance is a giddy parade of rolls and chokes, momentarily confusing the sidelined onlookers with a softer, jazz-lite wave to the crowd, who, having decided to wave back, are surprised by a final curt, blasted paradigm puncture. Just when Natural Dreamers seem understandable, they whisper over your shoulder that you were looking the wrong way. The surprise does not get old, and every direction unearths implausible realms of clanging distractions. From the sunny, atavistic Deerhoof-isms of "The Big Switch" to the growling Sabbath-ness of "Fourth Man," the Natural Dreamers are worth the exploratory replay to find out what was missed on the first listen. In that way, the record is perfectly coy, swerving without rest between being daringly off-the-cuff and then devotedly premeditated. It's unusual and beautiful, playful and explosive, and artful but still just pop. - - - - - Pitchforkmedia By musical evolutionary standards, the band rehearsal is a prehistoric notion. Long ago, pop music opened its doors to the world of technological convenience. Now, accoutrements such as synthesizers, drum machines, and ProTools-style manipulators are standard fare for garage studios, and writing music is an increasingly solitary affair. While these devices have in many ways enriched the artform, their advantages have often come at the expense of the synergistic effect of live musicianship. Most regrettable is the loss of the exhilarating energy that can result when a group of people simultaneously know exactly what the fuck they're doing. Natural Dreamers know what they're doing, and they relish it. The band seeks to revive the floundering state of, well, the band-- that is, "band" as in the instinctual communion of musicians through an ineffable language and, most of all, lots of hard, noisy work. Natural Dreamers sounds like the product of many strenuous nights; one can almost see guitarists Chris Cohen and John Dieterich eyeing each other cautiously as they toil to nail each well-spaced kick, or Jay Pellicci sweating to keep the ship afloat. Miraculously, as if by kismet, the disparate pieces fall in to place, and Natural Dreamers is the sundry result of equal parts fate and painstaking craftsmanship. Natural Dreamers eschew immediate categorization, but it's helpful to consider that all three members have served time in Deerhoof. Cohen and Dieterich are relentlessly jagged and instantly recognizable. There's still no give to their boxy style of guitar playing. In fact, Natural Dreamers consciously give groove a stiff arm, faring without a bassist or, often enough, time signatures. At its worst, this formula yields instrumental math-rock that never learned its multiplication tables. At best, the band distills the pellucid nectar of melody and offers a refreshing take on pop music, at once retrospective and prescient. "Singer" tries on several different outfits before finding one that fits. The band steps gingerly into these different guises, considering each new move with Kasparov-like deliberation. When they finally decide where they're headed, their declaration of purpose is brazen and not a little shocking: The timid guitars abruptly meld into a fragmented three-note loop, while Pellicci loosely keeps time, battering his cymbals irreverently and filling leftover space with frenetic snare rolls. From there, the track picks up the record's steadiest rhythmic vamp, a thick shuffle accompanied by a wistful glockenspiel melody. It's a clear standout and a suitable mission statement for a band whose sound isn't easy to pin down. Elsewhere, "The Big Switch" approximates a free-jazz Lightning Bolt, while "The Golden Pond" and "Fourth Man" utilize silence and some analog electronics to an interesting stylistic effect. If Natural Dreamers is at times unbearably chaotic, it isn't because the record is too strident; paradoxically, it's because some of the songs aren't abrasive enough. There's tons of melody here, often crystalline and strikingly beautiful, only much of it is transmogrified by the band's flighty, abstract style of composition. As such, tracks hint at a transcendent melody, only to not quite grasp it. But in the end, this penchant for obfuscation is as much of a boon as it is a bane. As they posited with Deerhoof, Cohen, Dieterich and Pellicci seem to believe that the visceral heart of pop music lies not in the way instrumental elements coagulate, but rather in each sound's naked isolation. Much like abstract painters of the 20th century, who used paint as subject matter, they deconstruct and decontextualize traditional form, and as such, Natural Dreamers is a demanding but ultimately enlightening album. - - - - -
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