Bar/None Records
2006
Eisenhower
About This Album
Jam band the Slip chose their 2006 release Eisenhower to show that they're capable of stepping outside the boundaries of hippie-hash college music, and maybe they shouldn't have. The disc shows the band cunningly embracing alt pop conventions almost completely one moment, and becoming lost in a quagmire of their own wanderings the next. A few tracks, like "Even Rats," leave the Slip's roots behind altogether and embrace an indie rock sound almost completely -- and with great success. A handful of others plod headlong into the group's jamming past, like the eight-minute opus "Paper Birds," a rambling monument of improvisation with barely a discernible refrain. Most of the songs on the album are built on a musical idea of melding these two genres. The group does not always achieve this hybridization very gracefully, as on "Suffocation Keep," where a perfectly nice, spacy ballad gets stretched into mopey, sad-b**tard music. The formula works on the majority of the songs, however, where the jamming style brings something distinctly nonlinear to the traditional pop song format, creating something delightfully unconventional and unique. The tone of these tracks avoids silliness or kitsch -- even when singer Brad Barr careens into flying falsetto -- but it never really feels serious or self-important, either.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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