Among the list of instruments 4 Bonjour's Parties make use of in their debut album are a vibraphone, multiple flutes, glockenspiels, an acoustic guitar, an accordion, bongos, a laptop, whatever "noise" is, and, best yet, someone is given the esteemed duty of playing some keys that I'm assuming are managed by continuously thrashing them on their forehead while imagining what their musical career could have been. Yet even while Pigments Drift Down to the Brook could have easily become an example of throwing any possible instrument, synthesizer module, and language in to a senseless aural goo, it actual maintains a surprising sense of cohesive arrangement.
The majority of ambitious debut albums suffer through similar complications: a band will read “artistry” and understand that to mean "convoluted." This is the kind of misunderstanding that spawns bands who ramble through songs with an EBow piled on top of underwater gongs and swarms of dub effects like loyal sons of Marcel Duchamp after being told to "just play whatever." And this is one thing that 4 Bonjour's Parties well avoid. Each song is meticulously structured and stays far away from the aimless chaos that plagues many multi-instrumentalist bands; both acoustic and electronic instruments continuously alternate as focal points in every composition, reacting in each bar with slight variations while being tied together by the locked repetition of whatever principle instruments happen to be in that song. Every part has a purpose.
Too bad they seem to have a near-complete aversion to melody. Actually, you’d be hard pressed to find any very noticeable change in pitch at all through out the album, which is strange considering how heavily orchestrated this debut clearly is. Instead they choose to totally sedate each song, letting it apathetically sludge toward the outro as slowly as it can while safely neglecting to acknowledge any kind of significant tune. This is almost forgivable considering how well-arranged the album happens to be, and almost impressive in how well they keep any apparent melody hidden beneath so many structural layers, or possibly stored away in a vault. But compositional talent doesn't make up for the regrettable, packaged banality of the album.
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