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By: Mark Gomes
Date: 23rd May 07
Release: Album
To Cure: The hangover
What:
Pikelet
Who:
Pikelet
On:
Chapter Music
MySpace:
here
Launch:
Fri May 26 at Cloud City, Prentice Street, Brunswick. With Fabulous Diamonds, Francis Plagne and Josh Armistead. Free, all ages, no alcohol.
Pikelet's eponymous debut is an uncanny, down-the-rabbit-hole trip that remakes instrumental sounds with unabashed wonder. Terrifically paced, its intricate and slippery arrangements unfold with the beauty of a time-lapse photo; growing in lively directions and collecting and discarding layers at cloud speed. Whereas solo songstress Evelyn Morris, aka Pikelet, performs live with accordion, guitar, loop pedal and voice, this album is smothered in live drums, glockenspiel, tiers of vox harmonies and all manner of producer Casey Rice's blooming mix tricks.
Highlight tracks 'Size Matters' and 'Sewerage Man' both tell stories of characters strangely displaced from the real. In the first, a tiny man - Noddy? - goes about his fantasy fun chores, and in the second, a waste-disposal man wastes his life away (almost too neat). 'Miss Her' is beautifully melancholic drone pop lacing the morbid story of a girl gone missing with a haunting, stairs' descent glockenspiel figure. Overall, this is classic Chapter Music; pretty cute stuff, but as one song title asserts, ‘It's Not Childish'. Think the slow-food equivalent of Le Planete Sauvage or Pram.