5ive Style
Miniature Portraits
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5ive Style
Miniature Portraits
Sub Pop, 1999
RiYL: Heroic Doses, The Meters, Ry Cooder, Medeski, Martin & Wood |
While its roster might help Five Style sell a few more records (how many of us would buy the admittedly good Doug McCombs album if we didn't know him from Tortoise?), it thankfully has little to do with the band's sound, steeped in the fundamentals of classic good-time music. These guys put an original slant on the tried-and-true ideals of funk and jazz, and do it with enough zest that Miniature Portraits, the band's first album in four years, might actually get the stoic indie-rockers in the house up and grooving. And that's no small feat.
Although all of the musicians in Five Style are rock-solid, it's guitarist Bill Dolan that separates the outfit from any number of bands weakly incorporating "funk" into guitar-based music. Dolan is an extremely skilled player and, having indulged his edgier side with Heroic Doses on its 1998 album, he turns in clean, economical riffing on Miniature Portraits, often on an acoustic guitar. Overall the album has a more friendly and welcoming vibe than Five Style's 1995 debut, and luckily steers far away from the dreadful frat-pop of the band's 1997 single. Still, tracks like "Wrong About You," the swampy funk of "Marmy The Count" and the feel-good "Sailor Girl Song" reprise the debut's crunchy charm.
Jacobsen's contributions are more evident, as he leads the charge on the organ and melodica-drenched "The Lost Oar" and adds just the right quotient of gurgly noises atop "Hit The Decks," transporting the listener to a sunny tropical beach, Pina Colada in hand. The electronic touches never spoil the organic movements below, and really gel on "Pledge Drive," this time with steel drum providing the enchantment of an island getaway. The band even gets silly on "The Fancy Dance In Jeremy's Pants," a ninetyfive-second boogie keyed by Jacobsen's saloon-style piano tinklings, and "Father Time," a dubby delight on which a disguised voice half-warns "don't fuck with Father Time."
The more jam-oriented songs are the most enjoyable, and although none exceed the four-minute mark, these are the tunes that are probably thoroughly embellished in live performance (Five Style once played so long past its allotted time at a 1995 show in Bloomington, Indiana, that the soundman actually turned off the stage electricity on them). Opener "Mythical Numbers" rides a bad-ass Dolan riff into a breakdown where all instruments play the same notes. After a nifty little solo, it's back into the earlier riff, but this time with a solo on top of it. Marimba provides a perfect counter-melody on well-titled closer "Playful Sounds For The Hostile Grounds (Reprise)," which slows the pace down a few steps from "Mythical Numbers" and is rewarded with a head-nodding bassline that could go on for eons.
Miniature Portraits is the perfect soundtrack for daydreams, late summer chilling and a little bit of grooving. Lord knows we could all use more of each.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"