Album of the Week: Olivia Tremor Control- Music From The Unrealized Film Script: Dusk At Cubist Castle

There's just something about late 60s/early 70s music that continually fascinates and appeals to music listeners. Though there was a lot of great music made beforehand, this era in particular feels like the point at which musicians--pop musicians in particular--began to take music seriously as an artform. Bands taking themselves and music seriously would result in a lot of pretentious dreck, but there's no denying the huge amount of fantastic music that came out during this time. It's a well known tale, but the Beatles and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had a friendly rivalry going, resulting in some of the best pop music ever made. All over the world, people were really pushing themselves to innovate and to say something with pop music. The rise of concept albums, progressive rock, art rock, and so on were all results of this trend.

It's no accident that the Elephant 6 collective latched unto this era as their influence. And as, arguably, the flagship band of the collective, the Olivia Tremor Control represented the most obvious and pure obsession with this era, creating music that sounded like it belonged in the late 60s/early 70s and to sit alongside the incredibly ambitious pop music of the time. Music From The Unrealized Film Script: Dusk At Cubist Castle (whew!!) is the band's first album, and a suitably monolithic debut it was. Even the background of its creation sounds like it could be the story of some kind of 60s hippie commune taking too many drugs and slowly finishing a masterpiece, as it was recorded over the course of three years on outdated 4-track machines (just like they had back in the 60s, kids!! Well, OK, Wikipedia tells me that they later used a 8-track for final production work).

Olivia Tremor Control is the story of the co-existing-but-ever-dueling music sensibilities of Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart. While Doss is seen as the pop classicist, writing incredibly catchy 60s style tunes, Hart is seen as the arch experimentalist, favoring tape collages, ambient soundscapes, and musique concrete. As such, Dusk At Cubist Castle is a fascinating, complex album that rewards the returning listener. Though primarily a psychedelic pop album that recalls the best of the Beatles at their druggiest and catchiest, the album also has a middle section entirely given over to the 10-track 'Green Typewriters' suite, a showcase for Hart's experimental bent, as well as odd sonic tricks throughout. I've always thought of Dusk At Cubist Castle as a perfectly paced album; that is to say, an album's album. Right about the usual time I tend to drift off while listening to a long album, Dusk hits the 'Green Typewriters' suite, and wakes up along with me 23 minutes later. Not that it isn't an engaging listen, as it gives little snippets of mini-songs along the way that are intriguing glimpses of what could have been full songs, but once you hit the drifting, ethereal heart of the suite, it's hard not to surrender to the void.

At 27 tracks and 74 minutes of music, Dusk At Cubist Castle may seem like a daunting, overlong listen. But thanks to the delicious pop songs of Doss, it's a breezy experience: 'Jumping Fences' is rightfully considered one of the best things the band produced; 'I Can Smell The Leaves' has a druggy, reverential vibe; and 'The Gravity Car' sounds like a music box or carousel going delightfully out of control. More than anything, though, Olivia Tremor Control prove to us what the best artists of the late 60s/early 70s discovered: pop music and experimental music aren't mutually exclusive. Though I have to confess that I personally enjoy the band's second (and last) album Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume 1 slightly more because it's darker, crazier, and not-as-slavishly-close to the 60s sound, Dusk At Cubist Castle represents the more successful combination of the visions of Olivia Tremor Control's co-leaders. Black Foliage often sounds as if the yin and yang are tearing at each other and stepping on each others' feet, but they co-exist peacefully on Dusk.

'Timeless' is a term that's sometimes bandied about to indicate music that has a unique sound which doesn't belong to any particular era or scene. I'm not sure I would call Dusk At Cubist Castle timeless. What I am sure of is that I would call Dusk At Cubist Castle an incredible achievement in pop music, and an underground legend deserving of its praise.