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Dusted Reviews
Artist: Recloose Album: Hiatus on the Horizon Label: Peacefrog Review date: Nov. 22, 2005 |
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Matthew Chicoine, a.k.a. Recloose, has always been a slightly problematic figure. Though his previous full-length Cardiology was gorgeous - particularly on singles “Ain’t Changin’” and “Can’t Take it” - Chicoine’s productions always risk waltzing into the tepid, their well-meaning eclecticism reducing everything to a grey slurry, each song spiraling further into a pit of pleasantry-cum-boredom. If Cardiology staved off the tedium with pop hooks, Hiatus on the Horizon forgets the importance of tunefulness as a counter-balance to Chicoine’s more prolix tendencies.
The disc starts in passable fashion, with “Landed”’s burping melody staying on the right side of the precipice. The rot sets in soon after, and the rest of the record sounds distinctly overcooked - its politeness and smoothed edges affording Hiatus on the Horizon the very dubious privilege of being excessively digestible and stranded firmly in the middlebrow. Neither texturally voluptuous nor overloaded with pop pleasure, the album ultimately has to rest on its techno-soul-jazz cod-fusion laurels.
Hiatus on the Horizon is noncommittal - Recloose has smoothed out the kinks in his songs, the moments of excess and rapture ironed out into one long, drab invocation of the ‘nice.’ I don’t doubt hipsters who congratulate each other on their knowing refinement will love it, though, further proof that Hiatus on the Horizon puts the bland back into blandishment.
By Jon Dale
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