Deservedly heaped with praise by most who heard it and disliked only by idiots, Olivia Tremor Control's 1996 debut, Dusk At Cubist Castle, was the sort of record that you could listen to every single day and discover a new bit every time. Blessed with the herculean ability to weave exhilarating Beatlesque melody and A-1 vocal harmony with mondo bizarro gypsy carnival head rock B-cinema landscapes, this shadowy Athens, GA ensemble (photographed rarely and usually with their faces obscured by corn) achieved total godhead around the NUB compound and stayed there. Time and time again we would slump groggily around the stereo and wonder how in the hell they made that sound. Short songs with weird titles. A somewhat low-fi, undeniably cool '60s-dervied production aesthetic. What's not to like?
Two years later, Black Foliage picks up where Cubist Castle left off, delivering around a dozen more mindbending pop classics interspersed with a yet unslakable thirst for avant-garde sound composition (adding up to 27 tracks). In other words, between coherent songs you'll find yourself tucked into a broken grand piano armed with a tape machine that only plays backwards only to be jerked through a tunnel of distortion-saturated synthesizers into daylight and rolled through piles of leaves by a grinning, demented Eastern European Salvation Army Band. Granted, isolating any particular thread that runs through the off-the-rails noodling of the recurring tracks "Combinations" and "Black Foliage: Animation" is pretty impossible even after a dozen listens (although some of the melodic themes do turn up in the fleshed-out songs that follow), but that's the nature of this beast. Many would argue that OTC would be a better band with more focus, but they also wouldn't be the same band.
If it's songs you're concerned with, simply exercise the "program" function of ye olde compact disce machine and prepare to be wowed. OTC have a peculiar knack for infusing even the bounciest of pop ("A Sleepy Company", "California Demise 3") with a twinge of melancholy that makes it deeply irresistable, and beyond that, a wealth of minute sonic details (like the bells that close "Grass Canons"). "A New Day" and "A Place We Have Been To" are skywriting romps. "Mystery" and "I Have Been Floated" (featuring a striking cameo from Neutral Milk Hotel leader Jeff Mangum) drip with the underwater moxie of the White Album or Abbey Road while incorporating Russian folk-style instrumental breaks that are purely OTC. "The Sylvan Screen" closes with note-perfect, Beach Boys-derived a capella harmony. And "Hideaway" is simply perfect, a sweeping, horn-bedecked slice of tunefoolery with a heartbreakingly beautiful hook: a "Band On The Run" for '99 and beyond.
What else can be said exactly? If you're a pop geek, buy this record. If you're a psychedelic freak, buy this record. If you're an adventurous listener whose goose is still cooked by a great melody, buy this record. If you're looking for the innovators of the future and want to get in on the ground floor, buy this record. If you're not any of these things, buy it anyway.
--Lane Hewitt