pic•a•resque (pĭk’ə-rĕsk’, pç’kə-) adj.
1. Of or involving clever rogues or adventurers.
2. Of or relating to a genre of usually satiric prose fiction originating in Spain and depicting in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society.
Now would seem like an especially good time to make like The Arcade Fire, only marginally less so. The zesty Canadians have set the bar so damn high this year with ‘Funeral’ that to be anywhere near them is surely a thing to be celebrated. And ‘Picaresque’ is a celebration for sure. There are points when every note played seems like an event worth marking with sandwiches and bunting, uncomplicated music performance at its most knowingly burlesque. It’s an album packed to the ribs with decorative indie pop, accessories a go-go, an entire colour swatch of related emotions bleeding through in turn. It’s music projected beyond its origins through its spirit alone. And those are the qualities they most share with Montreal’s most theatrically eccentric sons and daughters. There are tales to be told here, characters to be portrayed by characters capable in their own right.
They also share figurative shelf space with the likes of The Hidden Cameras (for toned indie-folk simplicity delivered with beautiful exaggerations) and Neutral Milk Hotel (for more ballsy quirks), but this belongs to its own lineage, rooted in its own family tree that you can visualize sprawling elegantly behind them as they play. Some bands bundle a DVD with the main CD, fashioning visuals to compliment tracks and to project behind performances, some work on supplementary art, some on website interactions, as a kind of extension to the experience. Perhaps the only way to do justice to this record would be to create a lavish piece of bonus theatre, to realize all its possibilities and ends, with props.
The Shins are evoked immediately by the bundling, chiming momentum of ‘The Infanta’, a bright purposeful song that pulls you in right at the beginning. The record then veers between the traditional (the rustic folk of ‘Eli, the Barrow Boy’) and the contemporary (the Belle & Sebastian clap-along chirpiness of ‘The Sporting Life’ and the gleeful anti-US administration march ‘16 Military Wives’). And in ‘The Mariners Revenge Song’ they actually have a complete 8 minute act already formed for the theatrical supplement, ready to go, in costume, an accordion led knees up that shimmers with ye olde sea-faring storytelling. With such adventurous purpose and well formed narratives, here is an album that achieves precisely what it promises on the tub.