Cotton Mather's first album, 1994's
Cotton Is King, was fine guitar pop with a decided
Squeeze influence, but it doesn't prepare one at all for the sonic onslaught of its 1997 follow-up.
Kontiki is one can't-get-it-out-of-your-skull pop song after another, interspersed with bursts of tape collage and random studio noise. "Vegetable Row," for example, sounds like a hard-candy circa-'66
Dylan outtake before it ends with a few seconds' splice of a completely different song, which is rudely chopped off in time for the organ-driven "Aurora Bori Alice." Variety is the watchword on
Kontiki. The wildly overdriven feedback-fest "Church of Wilson" leads straight into the gently swirling keyboards and acoustic guitars of "Lily Dreams On," which immediately makes way for the classic harmony-filled jangle pop "Password." The amazing thing is that, despite the wild mood and style shifts, the album doesn't sound fragmentary in the least; the pieces all fall into place.
Brad Jones' production features studio chatter, audible edits, and remarkably loud clicks, and yet the overall sound is enormous, filled with amazing sonic depth. Lo-fi this ain't. Song titles like "Camp Hill Rail Operator" and "Animal Show Drinking Song" might recall
Guided by Voices, and the audio vérité "Prophecy for the Golden Age" wouldn't have sounded out of place on
Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant), but neither band could possibly come up with a song like the instant classic "My Before and After," three minutes worth of nonstop hooks grounded with a percussive low-register piano part that makes it sound like a lost outtake from
Revolver. In an album's worth of nonstop pop delights, "My Before and After" is a clear masterpiece. [In 2012, the band reissued the album on Robert Harrison's own Star Apple Kingdom label, adding a second disc of outtakes, acoustic versions, and demos. While none of the alternate versions come close to topping the finished songs found on the album, and the extra tracks just miss being album-ready, the second disc does provide a nice peek behind the curtain and presents a new look at one of the great underrated albums of the 1990s.] ~ Stewart Mason & Tim Sendra