Bombadil - "I Am".
Bombadil - "Pyramid".
Bombadil's giddy new album, Tarpits and Canyonlands, is sunburst and lime-wedge, is summer folk and afternoon pop - but it's also utterly weird. There are songs in English, in Spanish; a happy song about a sad birthday (which is wonderful, and still up at Fluxblog); a song called "Koala Lumpur" - whose main lyrics are that same "Kuala Lumpur". The album's aesthetic is very pop (and in a small way it's They Might Be Giants - wait! wait! i mean that actually in a good way), but oddly the thing it most reminds me of is a defunct webcomic called When I Am King. Sentimental, sandy, absurd, vulgar, narrative, shot through with smiles. Tarpits and Canyonlands opens with a song called "I Am" (which might as well be called "I Am ... Building You A Pyramid"), offering chanted vocals, heave-hos, and a sort of glib piano-line. That song is later answered with another, "Pyramid" - a track with drumsnaps, pan-pipes, crash cymbals ... and those same heave-hos. They make a bizarre pair, twins whose talents are considerable but undeclared. You wonder what these songs are for, what caves this band can unlock.
[Buy/MySpace/Get well soon, Daniel]
Posted by Sean at June 11, 2009 12:15 PMit should be impossible to reference they might be giants in a bad way.
(sadly, i will admit that it IS sometimes possible.)
Posted by: dan at June 11, 2009 10:32 PMI've been really really enjoying these guys. Thanks for introducing them to me.
Posted by: (maryam) at June 12, 2009 12:55 AMSometimes repetition really works. Like here. Especially when it builds to something. Good songs.
Posted by: Bob at June 12, 2009 1:59 PMFurther news about what's to become of Bombadil: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A397675
Posted by: Anna at July 17, 2009 12:05 AM