Sound Team
Movie Monster (Capitol)
As its title suggests, the major label debut from Austin’s apocalyptic pop collective Sound Team is both cinematic and fierce. The keyboard-driven sextet’s compulsive zeal for an ever-changing array of sonic textures dances on the edge of falling overboard, yet it always reined in before devolving into gee-whizardry. This volatile concordance between carnivorous forward vision and pop convention builds its way toward a heady, vibrant sound that feels alive and unsure. Although Movie Monster emerges from an aural epicenter cratered somewhere near the cusp of Reaganism, Sound Team’s jet-setting approach reaches backward and forward from there, touching down in Brian Eno’s Berlin, Joy Division’s Manchester, and Arcade Fire’s Montreal, among other destinations. The esoteric title track taps out a semiharrowing, synthesized dystopia, but “TV Torso” sounds torn from an after-hours dance party held in the shadow of Pershing missiles aimed at the Eastern Bloc. While “Your Eyes Are Liars” offers the superlative three-minute summary of the band’s sound, the album’s most memorable pick hit might be “Back in Town,” in which pianist/vocalist Matt Oliver couples a faint Ben Folds bent with a hook that won’t quit. Somewhere in Hollywood, there’s a movie crying out for songs like that.
This article appears in June 9 • 2006.
