French Kiss
2008
Visiter
About This Album
Lots of late-2000s indie bands boast archaic and/or exotic influences, but few use them with the energy and creativity that the Dodos do on Visiter, their first officially released album. Country-blues fingerpicking meets West African Ewe drumming meets metal meets indie pop sounds like an all-too-wacky description on a band's MySpace page, but the Dodos turn these far-flung elements into delightfully natural-sounding music. What holds it all together is Meric Long and Logan Kroeber's strong pop sensibilities -- that's "pop" in the sense of memorable melodies and ear-catching hooks, because the Dodos' songs are too full of ideas to stick to a verse-chorus-verse format for very long. Visiter gets off to a simple, almost shy start with "Walking," which shows off Long's boyish voice (it sits somewhere between Ben Gibbard and Paul McCartney). Then the album really takes off with "Red and Purple," which crashes in on toy pianos and Kroeber's extravagantly syncopated drumming, creating a massive backdrop for the song's limpid melody and vocal harmonies. Visiter rarely lets up from there, coming in such a rush of vibrant words, melodies, and rhythms that it often feels like one ever-changing song.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)

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