Don't Even Sing About It

The Lemon of Pink by The Books

Insound

Today I went for a walk in the woods by myself, in a place I had once discovered many years ago. While the curves of the tree trunks and the logs all seemed the same, it also felt smaller, as if the world had shrunk and I was overcrowding it. During the solitary walk to what turned out to be something of a "master garden" (neither nursery nor botanical garden), I took my time to listen to the Books' The Lemon of Pink.

I have never listened to the Books before, and without this project, I probably never would have even had them come up on my radar. The Books largely takes samples of sounds, like voice recordings and song samples, combined with electronic mixed with acoustic folk.

As abstract and experimental as it sounds, the type of music they make is more towards the familiar than the "out-there"; with just a few notes on a violin and the creaking of a door in the background, the songs feel calm, while voices -- screams, laughs, prayers to god and airplane hostesses -- work to create a texture of feelings. "Explanation Mark" doesn't even feature music, but a woman and a man layered over each other, each just making random noises.

There is a patient energy to the album; every sound seems to be comfortably at home in each song (they even title a song "Take Time"! Coincidence? I think not.) "Don't Even Sing About It" is pretty dark, with the lines "Get used to hanging if you hang long enough" repeated over and over, though the next track "The Future, Wouldn't That Be Nice?", features a wave of laughter repeated throughout the song.

It's very easy to simply get lost in the textures of The Lemon of Pink; there are so many samples that it's surprising how they come together in a way that is not only melodious but beautiful.