Saturday, January 15, 2005

Plush - Underfed (Drag City)

Liam “Plush” Hayes' Fed was one of the great pop treats of 2002-all marzipan orchestration and yearning vocals, its dreamlike familiar catchiness worth all the trouble the songs had caused. The story goes that Hayes just kept overdubbing the material, year after year, despite Drag City balking at the cost, finally putting it out in Japan so that hardly anyone could hear it. It's a huge leap from the vagueness of More You Becomes You, and compulsively listenable. Underfed is the skeleton of the marzipan monster, a rough mix caught by Steve Albini in '99. Loving Fed's blend of funk and mist as I do, this feels kinda sparse and sloppy, but it's still a swell piece of Rundgrenesque orchestral pop, and much easier to come by than the fully stuffed edition. -Kim Cooper

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