Giant Paw- The Stars Are Ours

ARTIST: Giant Paw

ALBUM: The Stars Are Ours

LABEL: Feral Electronics

REVIEWER: Matthew J.

DATE: 1-19-10

With elements ranging from country to industrial to pop to garage rock, it's not an easy task to pin down Giant Paw's influences, but the psychedelia and sheer weirdness, for lack of a better word, on display here makes this an interesting album if not a universally appealing one. "Flood" opens things up with meandering guitar feedback and spoken word, with hints of tinny effects-filtered vocals calling to mind the surrealist retro styling of The Residents, while "Mosquito" is like a hallucinatory rendition of a cowboy hoedown, complete with looped mouth noises and whistles. From there, things segue into "Tea on the Lawn," a more stately but no less stony assemblage of echoing beats and weirdly rambling vocals that recalls the weirder work of early Pink Floyd or the Legendary Pink Dots. Giant Paw are definitely fond of lackadaisical sonic explorations, and that's especially true of the 15-minute Krautrock-inspired epic "Push the Light," with its spoken fragments and looped guitar drones, but there's an element of driving rock here, as well. "Skin of Your Teeth" combines the fuzzy organs of '60s-era garage rock with a hypnotic guitar riff that could've been lifted from an early Velvet Underground jam session, and closing track "Curse of the Giant Paw" is a vibrant cacophony of yowling vocals, punishing drum machine and screeching sirens somewhere between noisy rock and just plain noise. While there are a lot of bands doing quirky things to seem edgy and avant-garde, there's little of that self-awareness here; instead, it's just refreshingly balls to the wall craziness loosely tied together by '60s and '70s psychedelic influences. An impressive and strangely joyful album, this album wins you over with its enthusiasm and its charming lack of irony.

Visit the Feral Electronics label at www.feralelectronics.co.uk for more information.