Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 08/29/2006
Great
pop music often requires great partnerships, and intriguing
pop music often results from the collision of complementary but competing forms of expression. In vocalist/songwriter
Angelina Moysov and guitarist
Tom Ayres, the San Francisco band
Persephone's Bees reveal a partnership that, on the surface, never should have worked.
Moysov is a native Russian transplanted to California in 1990, who gained much influence from her Gypsy heritage, although her singing owes as much to the
très moderne French and Brazilian schools.
Ayres meanwhile, is a guitar freak who displays a close knowledge of
power pop, alternative dance, and the heavy chordings of
glam rock gods like
Brian May and
Mick Ronson. Together, they make
Notes from the Underworld one of the best major-label debuts of the year, an everlastingly fresh parade of dynamic
pop songs and cunning productions. (Producer
Eric Valentine deserves much of the credit for the latter.)
"City of Love," already famous thanks to a Razr phone ad, is an exercise for
Moysov's coy wit and
Ayres' economical licks (which range from smooth to shrieking), while
Valentine delves into production textures by Wurlitzer and Theremin. The song has nearly as many twists and turns as a track from
Fiery Furnaces (another band who know something about Orthodox Europe), but with an inevitable sense of energy that's been difficult to find with
the B-52's entering the studio less often than they did in the '80s and '90s.
"Nice Day" is another clear single, and although its breezy platitudes, the group makes it lively enough. If
Moysov is the star of the first half of the record,
Ayres takes over side two, beginning with the brisk
"On the Earth" (whose false fade yields 30 seconds of pure bliss), and segueing smoothly to the sweet
Fleetwood Mac pop of
"Walk to the Moon." "Paper Plane," and
"Queen's Night Out" are exquisite pieces of jagged British
psychedelic pop (both of which could have slotted nicely on the '60s Brit box set,
Nuggets, Vol. 2). The closer,
"Home," is just as self-assured and dynamic as the ten songs before it, and coasts into the sunset with a slide-guitar coda worthy of
Jeff Beck himself.
~John Bush, All Music Guide
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