"There's an appealing modesty at work on the debut album by Electric President, a Florida duo that confidently allow their homespun electro-pop to bubble away without feeling the need to constantly doctor the ingredients."
I am entering the 15th hour of what was suppose to be a 9-5ish typical work day (My real day job). I am tired (brain dead actually), it is now midnight and I just realized I have yet to review a PFM review to post for tomorrow.
Shit.
Today has been particularly stressful (left eye is twitching and I have hives for some stupid reason) and with extreme work conditions the music I listen to can either make a bad day better or take a bad day to worse. You might find it hard to believe that I can listen to music ALL day and find everything either forgettable or so annoying it needed to be pulled from my stereo by the third song but today has been for the most part one of these days. I hate music right now, I swear I do and then I remember which record I wanted to post about.
Electric President.
Sometimes a number rating, in this case a so-so 6.7 just doesn’t seem human enough. A 6.7 doesn’t tell the reader that this is the kind of record that can rescue a bad day and I am willing to give that kind of life preserver an 8. It isn’t easy to make electronic music sound like real live thinking feeling humans made it but with the addition of wailing and wild guitars powered by what I can only imagine is an ebow, live drums, acoustic guitars, a piano, and a human voice that stylistically bridges Why? to Postal Service yet Electric President have done it.
Sigh. (of relief)
PFM might call the sound of this S/T debut repetitive but I call it congruent and consistently pleasing. A humble hushed voice rises like a kite to something sunny and crashes back to the ground with unpredictable breezy instrumentation leading the way. If you listen carefully enough there are hundreds of hidden treasures on this record, black cloud lyrics I imagine slow dancing with Notwist, giggles, whispers, drop outs, mysterious buried sounds that hover gently over the entire record like ghosts…all things which celebrate just how personalized a home recording can be. Studio records kill these tiny intimate moments and here they take a charming collection of material and make it something so personal you will want to carry it around in your shirt pocket.
Matt Murphy I am sorry this record failed to satisfy your PFM standards.
It might be the beer that I decided to crack open a few minutes ago but I swear to you my eye is no longer twitching and the urge to permanently place my head on the cool faux wood of my desk has resided. It took me nearly 16 hours to find where I put my love for music but here it is- a total of ten tracks by an almost totally unknown band from Florida called Electric President.
Florida, I am still not so sure I love you but you your episodes of Cops are always the best.
