It’s a tale of shaving cream and make up, swimming around and break-ups in an ultra-self conscious stylee. Most people balk at the first sign of self-reflexivity in music and I’m no different, so the clever clever winks and nods to organ fades, carousel stops, made-up screaming babies and notes and dots and rhymes pretty gets fairly tiresome and ingratiating by track five. The downside of shooting off one smirky and smarmy meta-strike after another is that the listener never gets an opportunity to engage with the music on any personal level. Talking about ‘words’ and ‘rhymes’ is the musical equivalent of actors slipping out of character and turning in quirky asides to the camera whilst the rest of the cast look. If I wanted the fourth-wall tearing down, I’d get a sledgehammer and do it myself.
It’s not all bad of course. It’s bright, it’s breezy and tracks like ‘Blooms Like Flowers’ and ‘Within These Forest Walls’ even manage to evoke the slinky, effortless sighs of Astrud and Bebel Gilberto and the cutesy weightlessness of Fonda’s Barbarella. It’s part seaside, part-Sci-Fi and part avante-garden geek stunt.
Anyway, meet Alex Lilly: sometime singer with Bird and the Bee and brewer of catchy and frothy bubble-pop.