Cosmo Sheldrake: The Much Much How How and I Review


 

Following in the footsteps of Beirut and Sufjan Stevens, Cosmo Sheldrake has brought some very new ideas to indie music. That's no small feat, especially if you've ever listened to Sufjan make saxophones sound like a sunrise bursting with butterflies, Alt-J sample Myley Cyrus, or the cutting room floor samples of Bon Iver. Noel Gallagher is right, and that's why these things keep happening, giving us great music to listen to if you're willing to look for it.

The Much Much How How and I is, despite what I just said, not a new idea. But it sounds wholly unique, well realized, and delivered with cool confidence. The pitch is simple: mix Romanian music with Benjamin Britton and have Roald Dahl write the lyrics. Add whatever stupid sounds you hear in your house for one day and mix it up. That's what Cosmo Sheldrake has brought to us.

If that sounds like it would be perfect for the next Tim Burton film, you're not wrong. There's a sickly paleness to the music stemming from refusal to play in a happy major chord. Most of the orchestra is here, playing in the aforementioned Britton style, one by one on many tracks. The sound of spinning quarters on a table, pushing an inverted cup into a clogged sink and letting the bubble come to the top, whistles, and clanging pans take their turn amongst marimbas, clarinets, and horns.

Let me be very clear: this is a great album when it's reaching for the rafters. Every song is full of ideas and avenues and hooks, it's almost overkill. Nothing crosses the line, instead dancing near it, sure-footed and carefree. Take Birthday Suit  as an example of how full and varied the songs can get, and remember that it isn't even a minute and a half long. THEN: tell me if you can hear a guitar on any of the songs.

Where things take a turn for the worse is in pacing. For some reason, the opener Linger Longer is over five minutes long and is fairly tame, a theme that ends up repeating itself later on Solar Waltz. The longest songs are often the ones the rest of the album sings about desiring to avoid (Come Along begs us to come away from the humdrum and hunting heffalumps). How these songs got as much dedication is beyond me, while Birthday Suit is so interesting yet so svelte. 

Whatever bogs down the album is so easily forgotten by the time the next boiling song begins. It's hard to judge too harshly when the highs make you forget the lows so effortlessly. The old saying that musicians have their whole lifetime to write the first album seems to not apply here; Cosmo is in somewhat uncharted waters, and it's ok for him to not have his sails positioned quite correctly yet. The lyrics sound like limericks, Cosmo has a wonderfully confusing voice, both resonant and flat, and like a New Orleans party, the music just might play forever. I am very interested in what's to come.

7.7/10

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