Having already issued a handful of homemade recordings,
Elizabeth & the Catapult sound unusually assured on their major-label debut.
Taller Children bounces between piano jazz, coffeehouse pop/rock, and contemporary lounge, a mix that appeals to NPR-loving sophisticates without alienating those who prefer mainstream radio instead. At the center of the storm is frontwoman
Elizabeth Ziman, a disciple of
Ella Fitzgerald and a contemporary of
Regina Spektor,
Ingrid Michaelson, and other piano-playing female songwriters.
Ziman distances herself from those females by simply casting her net wider, helming a torch ballad one minute and piling thick harmonies on top of electro-pop percussion the next. The presence of studio wiz kid
Mike Mogis -- producer extraordinaire for the likes of
Rilo Kiley,
Cursive, and
Tilly & the Wall -- helps fuel the eclectic set list, as it relieves the band of splitting its time between songwriting and production duties. Free to do whatever they wish, the musicians explore the boundaries of pop music with wide-eyed fascination and competency, using the studio to their advantage without resorting to the sort of dense, grandly orchestrated music that can't be replicated in concert. Some orchestral flourishes do pepper the album's ballads -- "Rainiest Day of Summer" evokes a rainy Manhattan landscape with Brill Building strings, and "Right Next to You" brims with gauzy layers of keyboard, vibraphone, and flügelhorn -- but
Taller Children devotes more time to the talents of the band, not its host of sidemen. This is a record that reveals its layers upon many listens, an album that channels the sophistication and elegance of Fifth Avenue while keeping its head in the bohemian enclave of the West Village. In short: very agreeable, very New York, and quite promising. ~ Andrew Leahey