Pick Up Sticks

Pick Up Sticks

Track Listings

1. Pick Up Sticks

2. Three Line Prayer, Pt. 1

3. Three Line Prayer, Pt. 2

4. Family Sighs

5. Waft

6. Perfect Window

7. Soldier's Shoulder

8. Dust of Months

Tracks:

One Last Final Push
The Guest
A Place Called La
Speck Of Dust
That's a Good Question
The Hallway
What Is That?
Busted Bell
You Know Me
Wrong Directions

Album Description

This group combines madcap menace and big top bombast to craft tilt-a-whirl, carnivalesque pop. Though compared to sonic pioneers like Pere Ubu, Captain Beefheart, and Sun Ra, The Vancouver, British Columbia band eludes simple characterization. While "Pick Up Sticks" boasts the Horses' signature cacophony of jittery guitars, swirling keyboards, and clattering horns, it also finds the band exploring ever-shifting rhythms and expansive atmospherics. Transfixing transmissions that could have been either beamed from outer space or unearthed in a time capsule from a lost age. "They Shoot Horses, Don't They? sound like post-punks raised under a big top, albeit one under the direction of Igor Stravinsky or Sun Ra rather than P.T. Barnum" - Boston Phoenix.

Average customer rating:

Humanized electronics

Pick Up Sticks
Bill Wells
Manufacturer: Leaf
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music

General | Dance Pop | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0001Z64IQ
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Tracks:

Pick Up Sticks
Three Line Prayer Part 1
Three Line Prayer Part 2
Family Sighs
Waft
Perfect Window
A Soldier's Shoulder
The Dust Of Months

Customer Reviews:

Humanized electronics.......2004-07-12

Bill Wells has done something on this disc that I don't know has ever been achieved before: He's made electronic music absolutely approachable while retaining its distinct character.

The year's only half done, and this is, really, only half a disc (21 minutes' worth), but I don't think it's going to be topped this year.

What Bill Wells has done is conceptualize music that--although it's never been played before--sounds absolutely natural and even inevitable. Playing computer and sampler with bandmates Stefan Schneider (synthesizers, bass), and Anne Whitehead (trombone, melodica), plus Barbara Morgenstern on keyboards on two cuts, he crafts a unique soundscape, at once mysterious/playful/intimate and industrial/distant. Kinda like our modern world.

Serene, ethereal, plodding, glorious, mundane; this music gets under your skin.

Big time.

One interesting thing about this disc is that it sounds quite experimental. For example, most of the cuts just seem to quit, abruptly, in mid-statement. But somehow, given the vibe, it seems entirely appropos. Like, let's try this, see what happens, then high tail it outta there. Which they do. And, weirdly, which seems to work.

Like Picasso pencil drawings.

I'm waiting for the full canvases.

Given these sketches, they should be quite something.

But, even if they never materialize, I'm sticking with what we've, serendipitously, been give here.

My disc of the year.

Pick Up Sticks
Average customer rating:
Pick Up Sticks
Bill Wells
Manufacturer: Leaf
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00022LDRU
Release Date: 2004-05-25