David Kilgour
Frozen Orange
Merge
I can’t speak from experience, but I imagine getting hit with a frozen orange has got to hurt like hell. It must be comparable in weight and density to a brick, but I’m just guessing. David Kilgour, of the seminal New Zealand indie pop band The Clean, is a man who wants to hurl the sound of icy citrus at you.
Enlisting various members of Nashville’s only respectable rock collective, Lambchop, Kilgour has put together a sweet little airy, humid, end-of-summer album. Frozen Orange has many brushes with greatness: the sweeping, aptly titled “The Waltz,” the chugging runaway chorus on “Living in Space,” the endless aquatic shimmer of “Gold in Sound,” the stilted, chiming Felt homage “Dogs Barking” and the ruddy autumn tones of “Blue Sky” are all superior pieces in the indie pop canon. Unfortunately, Kilgour loses steam in the album’s final act, succumbing to rehashed melodies and lyrics that border on painfully inane (see “A Head Full of Rolling Stones” for the worst offender). It’s a shame that the record is tracked this way, because these marginal tracks undercut a very strong beginning, leaving the listener with little especially memorable, except for a wistful nostalgia for the album’s brighter moments.
Merge Records: http://www.mergerecords.com
