The most startling aspect of Dead Sea Choir's grandiose, arena-art rock debut
The Thin One The Red One is that it was constructed inside a bedroom in Tulsa, OK and not in a Manchester studio. This is no slight against Tulsa, but one wouldn't expect a place as humdrum and unassuming as Tulsa to be the hometown of such an ambitious Brit-inspired musical project. That is the case though on this 10-song stunner, self-produced, mixed and engineered by 24-year-old lead singer Costa Stasinopoulous.
A self-admitted fan of Radiohead and Coldplay, Stasinopoulous and guitarist Daniel Gimlin formed the group after a few years fronting a local act known as Straight Lines. The band had limited success in Oklahoma and after they were informed that a 1970s band had used the same moniker, they went about starting anew. The duo rotated band members for roughly a year before settling on a final lineup.
The Thin One the Red One took more than three years to make and it's this simple fact that might account for its lofty ambitions and startling power. Though long-winded in numerous places, the disc is so forward-thinking and artful, an immediate comparison might be Of Montreal. No, not musically or sonically, but rather in the same abstract sense. That is to say, the psyche of Kevin Barnes is probably one of a select few that can honestly understand exactly what's going on in these 10 songs.
While it may be hard to follow, this epic album has a veneer of seasoning and audacity that one would expect from a band many albums into their career, not one just starting out, especially from someone as young as 24. That such is true makes
The Thin One The Red One a truly stunning achievement. What's more impressive is there is nary a hook, chorus or anything even potentially radio worthy offered here. And yet, the songs are so contemporary and so commercially viable, it's silly to think this album won't make a splash, if it gets into the right hands.
For starters, vocalist Stasinopoulous has a big earthy, emotive croon that immediately calls to mind folks like Guy Garvey, Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke. The album's only letdown is that it never allows Stasinopoulous the full room to roam here. Often times, he seems to yield his vocal limits to a wash of guitars and sonic fuzz. And oh yes, there's plenty of sonic fuzz. There's also a dash of piano arpeggios, sweeping strokes of reverb, a host of dissonant guitar work, sporadic strings and a plethora of blips and bleeps. It's this penchant for electronica, fuzzy static and random percussion that allow the Radiohead comparisons to last far beyond the vocals.
On the full bloom of "Image D93" and the undeniably precise "On the Up and Up," the band wields their talent and fine-tuned precision to a T. The twinkling piano on "Move it Child," sounds more like a
Viva la Vida B-side than that of something concocted in the Sooner State, while the heavy use of electronics on "Oriental Drippo," sounds more like
Hail to the Thief than that of America's heartland.. None of this is a bad thing, however. Heck, there should be more songs as gripping, operatic and elegaic as "The Ceiling."
GENRE: Rock, Experimental
For fans of: Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Mogwai.
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Promoted in the summer of 2002 by its title track featuring on a Lexus car ad, Open Heart Zoo received an adulatory press welcome, one reviewer going so far as to claim "albums like this come along once in a decade and artists like Martin Grech once in a lifetime". And, for once, the stratospheric praise is not far off the mark. At age 12, Aylesbury-born Grech, blown away by Radiohead's The Bends and lent confidence by his singer mother, began to write, sing and play. At 16, he entered a London studio and, 3 years later, emerged with this, one of the most startling debuts in ages. The opening three numbers immediately announce that something special is up. "Here It Comes", the title track and the first single, "Dali", evolve from monolithic sci-fi rock, through weird and beautiful orchestrations to a punishing metal. Then there's the quiet lullaby of "Tonight", the softly hypnotic "Penicillin" and the near-ambient "Catch Up", all of it riddled with well-chosen samples and overlaid with Grech's extraordinary voice, like Muse's Matt Bellamy's but genuinely soulful and far less blustering. Incredibly, for one so young, this is truly inventive rock, following a line from Soundgarden, through Radiohead to 2002, with the production atmospherics of Bjork and Robin Guthrie tossed in for extra effect. There's surely a chance Martin Grech has peaked before he's 20. But what a peak.
