(Suicide Squeeze)
The quartet The Six Parts Seven found a unique way to avoid the pressures of creating its new album, . The album consists of nine reworked The Six Parts Seven songs, but the group did not do any of the work. Instead, it rounded up some fellow indie artists to remake the songs for them. The Six Parts Seven handed its songs over to ten different artists like Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse and John Atkins of The Magic Magicians.
The Six Parts Seven is frequently compared to other instrumental groups like The Mercury Program and Tristeza, but is somewhat less exciting. The Six Parts Seven's music sounds like a detailed instrumental description of the plains of North Dakota-its subdued guitar compositions are intricate but lack prominent features.
Predictably, most of the artists that contribute to the album do not hesitate to move mountains into The Six Parts Seven musical landscape, and all of them add vocals. Surprisingly, however, many of them also add a bit of rural twang to the mix.
Brian Shaw's remake of \Now Like Photographs,"" for instance, sounds like a song from the soundtrack of a modern western, and in his remake of ""Sleeping Dragonfly,"" Sam Beam croons a folksy serenade.
The album's best song, ""From California to Houston, on Lightspeed,"" also relies on folk influences. In the song, Isaac Brock plucks at the banjo like a chicken taking a stroll around the barn, singing about life's hardships with the voice of a broken-down, teen-age hick and about love with the voice of a rural pastor.
The final product yields varying degrees of quality and a somewhat mixed batch of styles. Although the album has a couple of real gems, like ""From California to Houston, on Lightspeed,"" it also has a couple of rotten apples.
The absolute bottom of the barrel is ""Cold Things Never Catch Fire,"" reworked by Katie Eastburn of The Young People. Rework, however, is hardly an accurate description of what Eastburn does to this song. It would seem that Eastburn thinks her voice is so terrific that all it requires for accompaniment is some stuttering static, and therefore she decides to throw out The Six Parts Seven's song entirely.
Although all of its songs are distinct from each other, the album does not vary in style to the same degree that it varies in quality. While many of the artists who contribute to the album reach out to sample other genera, they tend to keep one foot firmly planted on indie soil. is certainly more diverse than the typical The Six Parts Seven album, but it is only a mixed batch of musical styles to the same extent that a fruit salad is a mixed batch of foods.
