That this is
Velella Velella's debut feels unconscionable: The Bay of Biscay may be the most criminally under-heard album of the 2000s. Sprawling and dense, at times too generous in musicality for a single listen, here is a record that treats
Head Hunters as a starting point before launching through
Sign 'O' the Times,
Since I Left You, Donuts, and every other spryly instrumental percussive freakout to rock a turntable or pair of headphones in the past 40 years. So, maybe The Bay of Biscay isn't in the same league as those records, but it recalls them in scope, bombast, and vivacity. The tension between live instrumentation and studio perfectionism is the album's singular idea, and it burrows into this point with such fervency that even without the kaleidoscopic span of its influences it manages to maintain their sense of comprehensiveness, of invention, of easy wonder. Both of the first two tracks, for example, rest on a loop of a breezy flute, but "Do Not Fold/Do Not Bend" seems to be rumbling awake, half-forming into cohesive grooves before melting into handclaps or an organ groove or straight boom-bap, while "The Bread Is Hard as Crackers" does just the opposite, setting a constant pace and letting the samples spiral around one another, with the flute loop acting as a safe regrouping point. Of course, those are just the first two tracks, and we've barely delved into the ways the percussion and samples tussle playfully with one another there, let alone discuss the unflagging invention found afterward. Witness, for further proof, the coruscating vibes of "If You Can't Figure Out How to Work It Maybe You Don't Need Another Drink," the phasing sci-fi
Go! Team group hug of "3 to the 6 to the 0," the
Flaming Lips largesse of the album's final moments. Witness any of it, really -- this isn't one to let slip by. ~ Clayton Purdom