Flamingo Honey,
Whirlwind Heat's Dim Mak-released follow-up to
Do Rabbits Wonder, is a mini-album in every
sense of the word: the band crams in ten songs in as many minutes. The results sound like they were locked up in a room and couldn't come out until they had written as many songs as they could in the shortest amount of time possible, but this off-the-cuff, on-the-fly approach actually suits the band better than the more studied feel of
Do Rabbits Wonder. Although
Dave Fridmann's crystalline, layered production is missed, on
Flamingo Honey Whirlwind Heat sounds more distinctive than the
Brainiac and
Six Finger Satellite-isms of their debut. That's not to say that they're not still reminiscent of other bands, though; actually, with all the genre-hopping they do on this album, they bear more than a passing resemblance to
Ween (especially on the silly electro send-up "H Is O" and on "Flamingo Lawns," which boasts trippy, helium-laced vocals and an out-of-tune harmonica) and
Enon. The band really does pack a lot into
Flamingo Honey's miniatures; from the
Sonic Youth-like opener, "The Bone," to the bouncy new wave of "A Worm's Coat" to the shouty skronk of "Pearl Earrings,"
Whirlwind Heat explores several directions that would be worth pursuing in longer songs. But, like their labelmates
Miracle Chosuke, the band shows on
Flamingo Honey that short, noisy blasts of fun can have as much impact as longer releases -- sometimes, even more so. ~ Heather Phares