To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie – The Patron

The term “dream pop” is generally used to describe a music where the melody, voices, rhythm and tone all blend into a kind of indistinct haze. TKAPB have more vivid dreams. The Minneapolis duo of Jehna Wilhelm and Mark McGee take an expressionist and/or baroque approach to lyric storytelling. The Patron is, from all accounts, a love song-cycle for merging corporations… and indeed the musical equivalent of concrete buckling and heartrending electric wiring is laced throughout. Somewhere, perhaps hiding under a photocopier, Wilhelm sings her swooning romantic songs while McGee catapults flaming boulders against the outer structure. In other words this ain’t “Jack and Diane.” At intervals, like on “Lovers and Liars” and “I Box Twenty,” there are bits that more closely resemble songs in the canon of, say, CocoRosie or The Cranes. Elsewhere shards of feedback and crumpled electronics gyre around the idea of a song. For all that it is an impressively elaborate first recording that challenges and repays the brave and economic of heart.

Kranky