Monday, January 4, 2010

Review: Double U - Pineapple Dream

Double U – Pineapple Dream

Wool Recordings 2010

[tags: dream pop, pop, indietronic]

Listen while reading:

Supersize (from Pineapple Dream)

Sweet Family (from Pineapple Dream)

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Sometimes I just need a small breeze of dream pop and only yesterday I received a nice music submission from a label and a band I was completely unaware of until now. Wool Recordings from France send over a copy of Double U’s new album called Pineapple Dream. Even though the album name reminded me a bit of Ursula 1000’s title track of his 2002 full length Kinda’ Kinky, Double U is far away of being jazzy electronic lounge pop (but again they are not this far away as one may thinks).

Franck Rabeyrolles, the man behind the moniker, finished his fourth album with Pineapple Dream that is going to be released by Wool Recordings in March 2010. Overall I would call the record a calm dream pop album with some acoustic influences and nice spherical atmospheres and arrangements. The tracks live from Franck’s voice as well as from the manifold synthesizer melodies accompanied by some electric guitar (very nice examples of this are the tracks Take The Bus or the great Ring Me featuring singing saw). Other elements you’ll find are some female backing vocals and all sorts of electronic sounds used as percussions. And speaking of percussions, here is one thing I did not like so much about Pineapple Dream – the drum machine. Sometimes the drum sounds are a bit too retro for my taste because I don’t like to be reminded of the drum machine all the time. But this criticism doesn’t hit all the tracks (e.g. the title track or the stunning The Wedding work very well) and I’m not sure at all if all track were recorded with some electronic fellow on drums – but sometimes it’s a bit too much for me.

Besides that I think I should mention, that Double U doesn’t sound like you may think, for Franck plays a very different style in comparison to genre colleagues like Beach House, Sleep Whale or the fascinating Introductions. I think Beach House focuses more on the word dream and Introductions more on the aspect of combining folk and dream pop. Double U comes in underlining the word pop in dream pop, because some track brake out of the dream pop genre right into some sort of twee or indie pop like areas (e.g. I Made Up My Mind or Enough). But still there are moments that can be called regular dreamy dream pop with all the dreaminess you can imagine (hushed vocals inclusive), just like the great Breathing The Wind.

In the end Pineapple Dream is a fresh sounding record with lots of melodies, that isn’t afraid of being pop-y in the regular sense of the word with a good portion of indietronic sometimes. Most of the time it is dreamy but at some points it’s a bit too retro (especially in the drum sound) for my personal taste. So, if you are looking for a nice little dream pop CD, you should risk an ear on Double U’s new album coming out in March 2010. To buy the record, head over to the label’s page – and, as ever, visit Double U on his MySpace site for further impressions.

[Via http://commonfolkmeadow.wordpress.com]

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