shop | mailing lists
musicOMH
Facebook Twitter
music: album reviews
The Ladybug Transistor - Can't Wait Another Day (Fortuna Pop)
UK release date: 5 November 2007
4 stars
The Ladybug Transistor - Can't Wait Another Day

buy this title


track listing

1. Always On The Telephone
2. I'm Not Mad Enough
3. Here Comes The Rain
4. Therry
5. This Old Chase
6. For No Other
7. 3 days From Now
8. Inbetween
9. So Blind, Broken Links
10. California Stopover
11. Lord Don't Pass Me By
What do we want out of music? Simplicity? Complexity? Profound sentiments and melody? If you're like me you never really ask for anything, and when something like The Ladybug Transisitor's Can't Wait Another Day pops up you're free to appreciate it for what it is.

If this is the approach of a pop geek then I can take it, I'm definitely one, and in an artistic world increasingly driven by market trends and hollow hedonism something like this can blow me apart. Brooklyn's The Ladybug Transistor have been knocking around since the mid 90s, and have grown into a retinue of musicians that have spouted around them on the Marlborough Farms/Elefant 6 scene in the finest pop tradition.

Can't Wait Another Day features contributions from members of Aislers Set, The Clientele, Architecture in Helsinki, Great Lakes and Jens Lekman, yet essentially and maybe miraculously it retains a definite individual direction, Olson leading from the front with a dulcet baritone voice and quaint ear for the orchestral flourish, forever encouraging his friends to new heights.

Can't Wait Another Day floats from optimistic melodic numbers like opener Always On the Telephone to its downbeat and teary title track, the sounds sprouting off in all kinds of directions in between and teeming with disparate flavours, each one sitting with a perverse sense of ease. Inspired quirks come through the seams of songs to subtly push them to new heights, most memorably the country guitar that swishes through Always on the Telephone, making it sound like a dusty old Highwaymen classic, and the jazzy piano which drives Three Days From Now on in a heavenly retro fashion.

If I'm not mistaken there's a whiff of Lekman to Three Days From Now, wilfully, rebelliously stylish and etching new Pop constellations out of the apparently obsolete, and Jens' unmistakeable touch can also be heard in I'm Not Mad Enough, his lunatic-brilliant use of long-forgotten keyboard sounds assimilated in a song that sways with a smattering of soothing orchestral nous.

A feminine touch also runs through Can't Wait Another Day, the voice of violinist Julia Rydholm often joining Olson and adding another layer of empathetic allure, and it's all heroically underplayed from start to finish, forty minutes of Pop in its most beguilingly classical, sparklingly emotional form. It won't win any awards, just the hearts of anyone with a smattering of purity.

share
end of year feature
musicOMH's Top 50 Albums Of 2009
From the nearly 700 albums we reviewed this year, which did our writers love the most?
Introduction
50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21
20-11 | 10-4 | 1-3



released this week
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach Liars - Sisterworld New Young Pony Club - The Optimist Broken Bells - Broken Bells
Sa Dingding - Harmony Amy Macdonald - A Curious Thing Titus Andronicus - The Monitor The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
Gonjasufi - A Sufi And A Killer Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History Pavement - Quarantine The Past: The Best Of Pavement Kris Drever - Mark The Hard Earth
albums coming soon
Jónsi - Go Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can She & Him - Volume Two The Radio Dept - Clinging To A Scheme
recent releases
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me The Knife - Tomorrow, In A Year Archie Bronson Outfit - Coconut Frightened Rabbit - The Winter Of Mixed Drinks
Ellie Goulding - Lights Tunng - ...And Then We Saw Land Thus:Owls - Cardiac Malformations Turin Brakes - Outbursts
Alphabeat - The Beat Is... cliffordandcalix - Lost Foundling Polar Bear - Peepers Hanoi Janes - Year Of Panic
Sambassadeur - European Errors - Come Down With Me Shy Child - Liquid Love Blood Red Shoes - Fire Like This
Efterklang - Magic Chairs Marina & The Diamonds - The Family Jewels Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté - Ali And Toumani Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library
  1. more album reviews

TOP ARTICLES NOW
ALBUMS OUT THIS WEEK: Efterklang, Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, Holly Miranda, Strange Boys, Marina & The Diamonds, Kathryn Williams, The Courteeners, Tamikrest, Erik Hassle, Nedry, Toro Y Moi, Tom McRae...

ALBUMS COMING SOON: Jónsi, The Knife, Laura Marling, Archie Bronson Outfit, Frightened Rabbit, Two Door Cinema Club, Errors, The Radio Dept, Turin Brakes, Blood Red Shoes...

GIG REVIEWS: Beach House, tUnE-yArDs, Spoon, The Irrepressibles, Fanfarlo, Stornoway, The Soft Pack...

RELATED ARTICLES
ALBUM:
Ladybug Transistor - Can't Wait Another Day

EXTERNAL LINKS
The Ladybug Transistor



  more album reviews...



musicOMH
about us
contact
copyright
home
elsewhere
Twitter
Facebook
Last.fm
Soundcloud
MySpace
© 1999-2010 OMH