pop levi - blue honey ep
track listing : blue honey, (a style called) crying chic, mournin'light, baby again (midnight version), skip ghetto (echo park version)
and now for something completely different.
well for ninjatune that is. pop levi doesn't deal with cut up beats and turntables, nor does he do the jazz licks (well not on this record). instead he pays homage both stylistically and with his song titles to old fashioned 60s psychedelic pop music. but first a little background to this wonderful 20 minute ep.
pop levi, (english born, los angeles based) apparently used to be part of ladytron, as well as doing the mad jazz fusion stuff with super numeri (hence the ninjatune connection), so now that he has all that non-radio friendly stuff out of his multi-talented system, he has saved his proper pop songs for this debut ep which is being released on its own ninjatune imprint, counter records.
opening with blue honey, the sound is pure psychedelia. backwards instruments, treated vocals, hand claps, layers and layers of beautiful weirdness, if you remember xtc doing their dukes of stratosphere experiment, then this ep will bring as many smiles as their records did. with a production throwback to all things beatles, donovan, with dashes of the melodic side to hendrix (a style called) crying chic, is perfect with the meticulously layered acoustic pop music making for a radio friendly track par excellence.
of course, when the rockin'guitars of mournin'light kick in, it can get a little too close to lenny kravtitz at times, but thankfully without all the cliches and annoyance factor, as the excess of fuzztoned riffs are both funny, and spot on, with pops' thin vocals actually recalling marc bolan. to be honest, baby again doesn't really do it for me, the round the campfire phased guitars are fine and dandy, but the vocals grate somewhat, like some old led zeppelin demo outtake, however, the finale, skip ghetto is wonderfully simple but addictive stuff leaving the listener with a smile.
all in all a wonderfully fresh new-old sound bring an interesting dose of guitar based pop music to ninjatune, leaving the question, will pop levi become to ninjatune what maximo park did to warp ?
we can but hope, in the meantime we have a very lovely ep to spin on a regular basis prior to the album, 'the return to form black magick party', being released in 2007 sometime.