An equation for you:
Nintendo + Stevie Wonder + Progressive Rock + Cutesy Whispered Vocals = Max Tundra
Parallax Error Beheads You, the debut album from “bedroom” producer Max Tundra is a very strange listen. The album is fast paced, fun, eclectic, cute, but also complicated and artfully constructed. Despite the effort above, Tundra manages to resist (mostly) the inevitable process of analytical breakdown.
The constituent parts listed above, however, go a long way in determining what this album evokes in its listeners. The most “single” like song on the album is “Will Get Fooled Again,” where we see the speaker trying to employ many of our modern conveniences to find love: Google image search (an interesting tactic!), Ebay, MySpace, Friendster (people still use that?) etc. Of course, these searches are in vain, but we forget about that when at about 2:00 mins, Tundra smoothly transitions into what can only be described as a prog-rock synth breakdown. This juxtaposition, Dream Theater-ish keyboard running against the almost ska-like early verses, proves how versatile Tundra can be.
The genre mashing is not as effective elsewhere on the album, however. The Stevie Wonder of the above equation comes into full effect during “Which Song,” where Tundra hits the keys like it’s Innervisions all over again. A few fun verses give way to an extended synth jam that drags on a couple minutes too long, not utilizing the building and sweeping effects that “Fooled” does so well.
Sometimes it feels like Tundra is self-consciously flexing his versatility muscles, putting too much in too little space. However, he doesn’t give listeners much time to worry about it, as almost all of the tracks fly by at disco-dancing speed. “Orphaned” effectively shows how adept Tundra is at complicated keyboard/drum machine programming and sequencing, but after about a minute the initial effect wears off and this listener is ready for the next track.
There are lots of other weird, fun, sometimes slightly disappointing but definitely party-ready songs on this album, and overall it is more interesting than tons of other indie-electro offerings in the past year or so. Tundra seems to fit into the niche crafted by Dan Deacon (reviewed here only a few weeks ago): strange looking men who spend a whole lot of time in their bedrooms crafting really intelligent dance/pop music that engages the listener in a flurry of sounds, textures, and grooves. Where Deacon, however, has a sense of how to build an album through varying layers of intensity and interaction, Tundra’s Parallax feels more scattered, like he had some great tracks and some tracks to just fill in the gaps.
An engaging listen? Yes. But a repeat listen? Possibly not.
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