Four years after releasing 2005's
The Fast Rise and Fall of the South,
the Kingsbury Manx have returned with their fifth full-length album,
Ascenseur Ouvert! (that's "Open Elevator" in French), which finds the group newly embracing the notion of cottage industry, releasing the disc on their own Odessa Records imprint rather than working with some indie label. The group's musical approach, however, hasn't changed much; while the faint alt-country accents that emerged on
Aztec Discipline once again appear on the horizon,
Ascenseur Ouvert! is dominated by the beautifully lackadaisical melodic sense that's long been the group's trademark, with the steady but deliberate ebb and flow of the tunes lurking somewhere between psychedelia, folk-rock, and art rock at its most pastoral. "Well, Whatever," "Mend/Move," and "Over the Oeuvre" are the token (relatively) uptempo selections (they have melodies you can actually hum and the former could pass for a tribute to those gloriously bummed-out Canadians
the Poppy Family), but the rest of
Ascenseur Ouvert! eases along with the quiet majesty of the band's best known music. The Kingsbury Manx's impressive gifts as both composers and arrangers remain a wonder to behold, bringing a rich variety of colors, textures, and moods to these recordings that invest the album with an admirable eclecticism; while every song sounds distinctly like
the Kingsbury Manx, each has an aural identity of its own, and it's obvious these musicians aren't running out of new ideas about where to take their music just yet.
Ascenseur Ouvert! is beautiful, graceful stuff that gently pulls at the heart and the soul, and you'd be hard pressed to name another American act that follows the same muse with such rewarding results. ~ Mark Deming