On their second full-length album, Abunai! do the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Clubs Band one better. Or, rather, 11 better. Instead of taking on the identity of another band, Abunai! take on the identities of a dozen different bands, each with a different style. Abunai! Presents the Mystic River Sound, therefore, acts like a mock battle of the bands compilation, complete with liner notes that expound on the elaborate history and mysteries of the Mystic River collective of bands, supposedly (if you are able to decipher the story line espoused in the liner notes) based in the suburbs around Boston (Abunai!, in fact, calls Boston home). Of course, to pull off such an ambitious concept, the music has to excel, and the band has to be entirely convincing in their different guises or else it just comes off like kids playing dress-up with lipstick smeared all over their faces. In other words, it would be very easy for the whole concept to meander out of control and get messy. Abunai! does not allow that to happen, though, in part due to the fact that all the "bands," be they '60s garage bands or '90s psychsters, have ties to the Mystic River sound and are therefore spiritual descendents and peers with one another. That concept gives the album its musical consistency, and each song bears the mark of Abunai!'s wistful, expansive psychedelia; however, the band also expands their sound into areas not explored on their debut album via their jump-cutting of inspirations. In the process, the album tries on a melange of styles, jumping from the modal excursions of their later-'60s namesakes the Earth-2 Abunai!, to the airy British shoegazer pop of the Red Blaise ("Learning to Ask"), to the early-'70s American folk-rock (think Byrds and Turtles) revivalism of the Merrie Shyrwode Rangers, to their own proper contribution, "Toast." In the end, the ambience of the album is too consistent for the concept, but if Abunai! is not always as convincing as other bands, they hit some brilliant high points in the course of their attempts: "Vanishing Point" (by mythological American prog rockers the Tea Tokens) is a gorgeous chimera of distorted guitar ambience, while you can actually imagine the proto-bedroom lonely-pop of the Scollay Squares' "Can't Always See" in a less psychedelicized arrangement as an unreleased Roy Orbison heartbreak ballad (as the liners insist it is). Every other song keeps the musical standards high, but in the end, there is not enough difference between the different hats worn by Abunai! to make the concept entirely successful. On ambition alone, however, it is a winner.
© Stanton Swihart /TiVo