Artist:
Jacco Gardner
Albums:
Cabinet of Curiosities
Release
date: 2013
Quality: mp3
CBR 320
Size: 110 MB
”Jacco
Gardner's debut album, Cabinet of Curiosities, is an impressive re-creation of
late-'60s pop psych, especially coming from someone who's only in his
mid-twenties. The Dutch studio wiz plays everything but the drums, and his
music is full of harpsichords, organs, flutes, and Mellotron, taking in
elements of the Left Banke, Sagittarius, the Zombies, and a thousand oddly
named bands with at least one guy sporting a frilly mustache. The first track
alone is like an encyclopedia entry for the sound -- "Clear the Air"
is a frilly trifle with swooning Mellotrons, twinkling harpsichords, lyrics
that take in ecological distress, war, and trippy dislocation, swirling
background vocals, and minor-key melancholy. For extra psych points, Gardner
uses the trick of singing in a deep, stilted voice in the chorus just like the
Strawberry Alarm Clock might. The rest of the album follows suit with Gardner
crafting pristine versions of gently pastoral psych that lend themselves to a
healthy round of "spot the influence," but have enough of his own
vision involved to turn out to be more than just pale imitations of a bygone
era. The songs are more like Left Banke album tracks or cuts buried deep on a
later volume of Rubble: they have the sound down perfectly and are mysteriously
intriguing, but lack the hooks necessary to make the them stand out the way
"Pretty Ballerina" or "She's Not There" do. That's a pretty
tall order, though, and it's no mark of failure to say that Gardner isn't
writing hits that will linger in brains and ring up sales. It's enough that
he's made an album that sounds so good and authentically psych-like, and one
that wraps the listener up in a warm embrace of misty melodies and cobwebbed
arrangements. Play Cabinet of Curiosities back to back with a Nirvana (the
paisley-clad U.K. version, of course) album and it will sound just right. That
seems to be what Gardner is aiming for, and he succeeds. All he needs now is a
mustache to go with the top hat he sports in the fuzzy photo that adorns the
inside of the album." ~
by Tim Sendra @ allmusic.com
