Reviews

The Zincs

Black Pompadour

Digg this review.
Add to del.ico.us.

Review Date: 2007-04-10

If The Zincs were a person, they’d be that friend you all have who often gives off a first impression of being pretentious. They’d be that guy wearing an overly ironic shirt, drinking the most expensive beer on tap, and you would think to yourself “who the fuck does he think he is?”

I’ve said the same thing to myself many times at a bar, and I’ve made the same observation countless times with an album that had a certain pomposity to it. And it happened to me again with Black Pompadour.

Still, how many of you have someone in your life now that you’d consider to be one of your closest friends when your first impression was that they were a giant douche? I can probably fill my fingers counting them off. And it’s like that with music, too. Black Pompadour is a smug record, and even to some degrees pretentious -- but it’s a faux pretension. It’s almost a joke, really; it’s just that you need to spend some time with the album before that becomes apparent. Some reviewers, it would seem, didn’t care to invest that time.

It’s commonplace to hear a band use the word “sycophant” -- as Elkington does on a personal favourite of mine, “Hamstrung and Juvenile” -- and assume that anyone using words like this is pretentious. I don’t buy it. Edith Frost lends her vocals to this and two other songs on Black Pompadour, and her appearances are some of the album’s finest moments. This song has been described as being about the plight of the single person, but it’s those very “pretentious” lyrics that makes this common topic as fresh as a daisy. Elkington’s deadpan delivery is given just the burst of gusto needed from Nick Macri on sax and whoever the mystery keyboardist is.

Ms. Frost sticks around for “Rice Scars.” This is the Zincs at their most tranquil, with a paper thin sound that seemingly could be carried away with even the slightest wind. In this perilous setting the lyrics are under serious scrutiny, but that is no problem when you have ones like “Salt dreams are dragging me down in the mouth / bird song is early each spring / when the gloss dries on the decade we’ll be long far gone.” Together Elkington and Frost purr back and forth on the chorus with whimsical “la-la-la’s” accompanied by subtle synths and even more subtle handclaps. Simply beautiful.

I hate to give the impression that the Zincs only are able to prosper when they are at the mellowest, or that they are only good with Edith Frost helping out – but I know I am doing a bad job at it as I prepare to tell you about “Lost Solid Colours” featuring Edith Frost. Maybe I just love how effortlessly I can absorb the often brilliant lyricism at this pace. I mean, how many songs have lines as great as “There’s a boyfriend who just can’t sit still for a girlfriend whose as old as thirst?” There is a crucial difference between slow yet calculated and boring, one that many reviews of Black Pompadour seems to have missed the boat on.

I would have been content with an entire album of unhurried precision like the songs above, but the Zincs wisely decided to include some peppier songs for the Brandons of the world whom don’t have the patience for them. For the Brandons -- who in reality far outnumber the Dans of the world -- The Zincs have provided songs like “Coward’s Corral” and “The Mogul’s Wife.” Neither song will ever be mistaken for the Clash, but they do allow for the band to reach a wider audience.

Unfortunately, this chapter in the story of the Zincs is much like the previous chapter: highly underrated band releases a new album of creatively unique sombre electro indie-pop that, for the most part, is largely misunderstood. And so it goes… we live in a time where a band like the Shins automatically fly up the charts with a sub-par album based on pass “successes” and a band like the Zincs are the mercy of some guy/gal’s fingertips at Pitchfork. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I will be doing my part to help rewrite this unfortunate chapter as it should have been written in the first place.

Score: 8

- Dan