Head Like A Kite

Head Like A Kite “There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere”

from There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere (Mush)

blip-pop// Out Now

(review/interview/comments, orig. pub. July 2008)

                                                             

“Three-ee, cheers. For your pie, oh, neers,” Dave Einmo nearly sneers, on “No Ordinary Caveman,” the first single from Head Like A Kite’s second album, There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere. Almost, but his mordant Robyn Hitchcock monotone keeps an impudent Alfred Hitchcock politesse in the rippling groove of this upstarting, near-one-man-band’s master plan for dealing with his precious OD legacy from ye 20th Century: “I do recall I forgot everything I had. Steal it back and get myself on track. “So hold the emo, Eno, Einmo’s own cold play has him (and well-selected musical guests) making notes to self and others through a megaphone, like an old-fashioned lifeguard, or maybe a prison movie towerguard: “Listen, young stunners. Wintertime is over. Face it, young stunners.” Yeah (time for the geezercore reviewer to stake another claim on context), what good are freaked-out, frozen hipster poses now, with the fabled Northwest Passage of petroleum pleasures finally opening up, via climate change and other liberation (and fair exchange, “They’ll call us to deliver their land from error’s chain, and it’s all right,” go Junior go!) Although them chill-bones do sound crisp when echoing through Antimc’s Skinny Gold Chain Remix of “Six Bags of Confetti”(from a new companion EP of re-skewed album tracks, No Ordinary Caveman). It’s a song sung, with a pail full of Cerulean blue (and “your sister’s, med-i, kay-y, -shun”), by the kind of too-cool school chum you should never, ever invite home (well, maybe once…). Mostly, Diamond Dave settles for impossible advice to the mirror (“look yourself in the eyes, but never in the face”), and other sanity-preserving tweaks of perspective, such as recruiting young Aaya Smoosh to exhort us like a re-sparked Bjork out of “waiting in the back rows,” to go hurtling further into the paradox-powered, outward bound “Daydream Vacation” (which a male speaker records as having occurred in 1970—it’s still happening though, baby! Especially on BoomBip’s Homecoming Remix). Mostly though, we’re invited to view this foggy, possibly melting pleasure dome of  iPod party pee-pull through the glass onion of hovering/inhaled Sgt. Pepper-ish strings, horns, headlines, shopping lists and skidmarks. Efficient use is also made of klanking, klassically Kinksy riffs and Cure quivers, sprinkled with sufficiently humorous, somewhat Steinski-esque vinyl samples and surface noise, disappearing/re-appearing smirks ‘n’ nerves. A little too thin and zippy sometimes, but the title song begins with kiddie giggles sliced and diced by the sidewalk vendor, as false memories begin once again to download, of Christmas morning bringing BBC greetings, somewhere around the time of the Battle of Britain, but not too close. Cloudy sounds curve and dilate, eye of the storm blinks open, crinkles benevolently, as stalwart Uncle Announcer reports, “There is loud laughter everywhere.” He’s so professional that his enunciation is post-British, and cadence must not, cannot be broken, as he faithfully and hopefully continues: “I almost. Feel like laughing myself.” But there are also little herky-jerky variations (tape-decay?) under the steady, fishtail turn of strings, which settle into a sardine sandwich with a koto spread, strings becoming as inscrutable as an Oriental smile. This might be w-a-ay after the Battle of Britain, hopefully after V-J Day—but never fear, “There is loud laughter everywhere, from those above and below.” Vocal and other samples recur as the fog re-gathers around the passing patrol or parade. “Be the light. In anything you please.” Does he actually say that at the end, almost drowned out? The second sentence at least and that’s enough of a titbit right now, HLAK and I feel sure (we’ll get what we can take).

Head Like A Kite’s Dave Einmo on “There is Loud Laughter Everywhere”

Why did you choose this sampled voice to base a track around?

The announcers in the 1950s had a character to them that is really cinematic.  I think of each song as a scene within a film. I want each song to stand on its own, but it also needs to work within the story. On this album the story is about travelling around the country and the joy of seeing new things and meeting new friends. I captured sounds from each city on my field recorder and then mixed them into the songs for ambience. In some cases I turned them into instruments, like on “Letting It Go on the Ohio Turnpike,” where semi-trucks speeding by sound almost like a drunken string orchestra. In other cases, I left the field recordings pure, like the tire-screech in the middle of “Daydream Vacation” and the New York cabbie dissing the Jersey girls at the end. When I heard the narrator say “There is loud laughter everywhere”, I just smiled. It’s really what the album is about. A big party that stretches from coast to coast, where everyone is laughing and having fun. Except for the sister in Lawrence, Kansas who is missing her medication…