Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Album Review: The Dodos - Visiter


The Dodos' debut LP begins with one of the most instantly hooky and likable opening tracks of the year. "Walking" struts along to a steady beat, guided by light banjo-plucking and effectively harmless vocals, perfectly easing the listener into an album that will soon lead them into very unfamiliar and often salient territory. Avoiding a fade of any sort, "Walking" rolls right into "Red and Purple", the first track to actually begin to reveal the band's full M.O.


Dodos is an experimental pop duo that hails from San Francisco, sparked in 2006 by the uniting of musical forces between two innovative, out-of-the-box talents. While singer/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Meric Long lends his boyish vocals and country-blues fingerpicking and rhythmic acoustic strumming, drummer Logan Kroeber equally contributes to the sound with an endless library of experimental, syncopated rhythms. Culminating these two very unique musicians' play styles generates a formula that is wildly creative. Although it may be foreign to some, it's ultimately grounded on great pop hooks that lend to its accessibility.

Visiter catapults the listener into the unknown, delivering a sound that shifts between familiar and unfamiliar, native and exotic, creating a constantly invigorating bipolar approach. As we delve further into the heart of a given song, we soon realize that things aren't quite as we anticipated them to play out. The basic song structure (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, etc.) is often discarded. The timbre of the instruments and vocals jump back and forth from clean to canny, gentle to harsh. The overall tone of a song can unexpectedly switch from subdued to threatening (e.g. "Joe's Waltz"). This idea of "expect the unexpected" is what makes The Dodos such a thrilling listen. One of the triumphs of the album is how, despite its wild and chaotic nature, it is still very approachable for the average listener. At face value the album is immediately welcoming, with its innocent child-drawn cover artwork and cutely misspelled album title.


The Dodos are an incredibly promising new band who, despite a few missteps, successfully pull off the much sought after feat nowadays of creating something completely original, exciting, and stunning. The band manifests a fully fleshed out sound despite only having two members. Visiter is an album that certainly takes time to adjust to and accept. It took me about five or six complete listens to fully become accustomed to the sound. However, I've actually found that my favorite albums of all time are those that I hated at first just because they were so foreign. In my opinion, this is what being a good music listener is all about, forcing yourself to give new material a chance despite how different it might sound from everything else you've ever heard. This is certainly the case for The Dodos, a band that doesn't look like it's going to be extinct anytime soon.

Key Tracks:
Walking
Fools
Ashley

Final Verdict: 8.7

The Dodos - Walking

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