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This disc is a little bit old now, having been recorded mostly in 2002 and released in 2004. Mandarin is a 4-piece from Denton Texas, where their multi-hyphenated brand of prog-post-rock-pop must stand out like a spiny cactus in a desert of space-rock bands.
The band has a love for tricky time signatures, with 11/8 occurring in at least 2 songs: the drone-inflected "Eye on Time," and "Virus Smile," a hypnotic 8 1/2-minute track which builds into heavy, expansive guitar at about the 5:00 mark. On "Pilot Light" Mandarin invents the new hybrid genre of math-garage-rock, with snarling guitar, distorted vocals, handclaps, and a 7/8 time signature. Even on a less complex song Mandarin will throw in a major curve: "Smother the Spark" charges ahead with a more straightforward pop sensibility until it swerves abruptly into a slow piano part, and then just as abruptly back. Throughout the album they utilize some studio-based experimental sounds involving knob-twiddling, a music box, and ambient field recordings. The final track, "The Gift of Not Living," is influenced by traditional Asian music, and closes out the album with a layered a capella finale.
Singer Jayson Wortham's breathless vocals skim and flutter like The Sea & Cake's Sam Prekop (with an occasional subdued Marc Bolan quality which I guess Prekop possesses as well), although he cuts loose with a soaring line on "Holiday" of the sort that Prekop has never allowed himself. The Sea & Cake comparison extends to the Mandarin's use of plucked guitar as well, although Mandarin's overall sound and approach is more experimental and generally harder-edged. In comparison to Mandarin's usual complexity, and especially following album highlight "Shadow Your Shadow," the song "How Long?" seems a little underformed, like it's an extended bridge that's meant to fit into another song. Apart from that, Mandarin is very successful at balancing atmospherics with rhythmic complexity, experimentation with melody, and delicacy with bursts of aggression. (mike.05.06)
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