Foreign Born

Foreign Born “In The Shape”

from On The Wing Now (Dim Mak)

Diamonds By The Big Yard// Out Aug. 21                            7.0

There’s plenty of rock that doesn’t rock, plenty of psych that isn’t mind-
expanding, plenty of pop that teases more than it tickles. And plenty of
thoughtful artists who seek the necessary degree of remove, for the sake

of perspective, and the right angle for a fresh insight, only to get hung up

on floatation, texture and OMG atmosphere.  Foreign Born are psych pop

in a good way, meaning that (despite a few sticky harmonies) they cut

through a fair amount of predictability. They don’t sound like they want to

turn you on to this Syd Barrett fella, nor like dorm rats smoking rubber

bands, nor like barefoot boys with cheeks of latte; they don’t jam; they

don’t sound just like New Age with effects pedals instead of synthesizers.

Well, sometimes they cut it close with that last, actually: they’ve been

called “shoegazers,” as a compliment! But shoegazing, as the name
implies, tends to mean getting merely zoned out, lost, and not in an
entertaining way, just a waxy yellow build-up of once-translucent patterns.
Which often includes a lugubriousness, habitual or otherwise (clinical?),
but way too familiar, even unto pop-schlock expression. “Will ye go with
me, Lassie, all across the purple Thorazine heather?” Foreign Born,
fronted by former folkie Matt Poplieluch, do frame their dusty skyscapes
in silver ferns and golden pine needles, they do seem to accept (and
pass along) their clouds and echoes as moody consolation prizes. They
can seem light-headed, with working beyond world- and word-weariness
(in a well-worn subgenre, in a well-worn world, for that matter), beyond
fatigue, into a fascination that could lose any beyond the most fannish.
But they also seem determined not to get lost: for instance, bass and
drums keep bending voice and guitar’s swoops into (or at least toward)
shorter phrases, sharper dents. The melancholy shading zigs and zags
into purposeful wandering though “Union Hall.” The name is sometimes
pronounced like that of some ancient relic. (What were “unions,” really?
Sex cults, probably.).These latest paisley pioneers reach the ridgetop
of their time warp, as Poplieluch, child of the Web, weaned on wonder
and the work ethic, calls out the lay of the sunbearing land, to his cohorts,
to the vastness itself, if to no other witnesses (oh, there’s somebody listening,
behind those rocks, so he’s a little tense). He’s leaning into, swaying
back from: “The land will break, the land will learn.” This land

will get its turn, just like we all do. This land was made for you and me.
(Popieluch sounds a bit Bono-ish on the chorus, but not too much.). Such

non-soggy sagas earn Foreign Born the right to seem privileged/lucky/blessed
on “In The Shape” where they go tumbling dice over teakettle through aces
of sunwhite in the tidal pool of some approximately infinite verdant shade, way

up in those other hills, on the other side of this summer’s drought-  and flood-
plagued labyrinth of baked cracks and river-like ruts. “Labyrinth,” meaning it
seems more of nature and/or the gods, and with no particular way out (like

the one where the Minotaur lives, waits, works), versus that maze up there in
the smaller, snug valley, where Poplieluch makes contact “with a wink of your
best eye,” not “ your better eye, “ so how many eyes you got? Three at least,
as do we all, no matter how well they fare, and his have seen you in the lake,
“In the s-s-sh-a-a-pe, I pretend I never saw, and I swam my better days,
wrapped up in you-ah eye-ahs,” or is it “ahhms,” something bending, sliding
those dipthongs you ah wearing, but all eyes are on the prize: sliding across
the sky, like a reflection of something much closer indeed (listen and you’ll see).
(This one’s more like Tom Verlaine’s better solo pysch-pop, minus any
tendency to squawk.)