The first track on the debut album by
the White Foliage is called "Drug Song," and it undeniably has a neo-psychedelic vibe. This duo have masterfully created some kind of fusion between the epic space rock of Ptolemaic Terrascope faves like
Charalambides (mid-register drones regularly appear, sometimes seemingly unconnected to the rest of the song), the fearless mix-and-match aesthetic and fondness for lo-fi tape hiss of
Neutral Milk Hotel, and even a little of
Sean O'Hagan's arrangement skills for
the High Llamas (banjo and French horn are prominent throughout, and closing track "Nostalgia" even mimics
O'Hagan's puckish
Beach Boys lifts by including train noises reminiscent of the end of "Caroline No" in an instrumental setting that would sound perfectly in place on
the High Llamas' Hawaii). The White Foliage would be an interesting listen just for the way they conflate such disparate sounds, but the beauty of
Zurich is that the sounds are in service to a genuinely great set of songs marked by memorable, slowly unwinding melodies and Marie Parker's hugely appealing voice. Though superficially just another wispy-little-girl vocalist, Parker lacks the pitch control problems endemic to this style of singer; more importantly, for all of the hazy dissonance of the arrangements, which invariably push the vocals well into the background, there's an unexpected urgency to her vocals on tunes like the title track and "Song of the Aesthete," a lack of the usual indie enervation. Too short by at least a third -- six tracks, one of them the 30-second "Interlude" --
Zurich is a delightful debut that promises even better to come. ~ Stewart Mason