From the beginning, Free Gold! is like an airplane cockpit with an ajar door; sounds are scrambling to hold onto something, as are your ears, but eventually it all gets sucked through a filter of Suicide-salutin' synths -- the same draped atop their last record, Invasive Exotics -- before being jettisoned into the great wide open. Indian Jewelry's melodies, rhythms, and vocals all seem to swirl with surreality. Everything is out of place and yet of a piece, always dynamic and yet always appearing to be one or two glitches short of a re-start.
Although it's never directly imitated, The Velvet's "Venus in Furs" also looms above Free Gold! like a never-ending shadow; its drone- and raga-like qualities are never far from the fray, as each song takes its sweet time to unfold, though only finale "Seventh Heaven" eclipses the five-minute mark. Evenly matched male and female vocals wind in and out of the songs -- which largely approach the ear like a foghorn bleating from a dense thicket -- spooled and respooled by the factory-line precision of Indian Jewelry's dripping-molasses beats, while guitars, bass, samples, and drums are all given ample opportunities to stretch out, depending on which song and which strangely tribal vibe oozes out.
Most valuable to Indian Jewelry's spread is their innate ability to record, sequence, and sustain their sound with virtually no hiccups. Free Gold! flaunts production that's shiny but never too iced-out, songs that sparkle and shrivel before they overstay their welcome, and what I can only describe as a workmanlike length -- it's the perfect exploration for any occasion, whether you have time for a few quick cuts or a full 50-odd-minute slash. What's more, each snippet contributes to the whole, creating a synchronicity reserved for albums that, well, are a Big Deal.
Indian Jewelry have invented their own sonic language through which to pump all their endless paranoia, panache and aplomb. Must be scary to be the competition.
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