INFINITE ELLIPSE AND HEAD WITH OPEN FONTANEL

Make A Rising are a Philadelphia band who have managed to create an utterly strange blend of avant-pop with indie and prog altogether. "Infinite Ellipse And Head With Open Fontanel" is an album which showcases a unique take on popular songwriting altogether; without shame breaking up beautiful balladry and putting the pieces back together in their very own off-putting beautiful way.

With the beginning of "Sneffels Yokul" you can hear the very keen interest the band invests in developing strong and touching melodies into off-kilter directions. A beautiful choir offshoots into this strange almost 50s rock n roll guitar riff while strange tin sounds come spinning from all over and Justin Moynihan takes up the vocal melody and plays with it until all the band joins in on the fun and it becomes this utterly strange pop song, shifting between an almost hard rock riff into a bizarre repetitive exercise of the B major and C major scales, constantly going up and down while drums roll and saxophones and keyboards join the fun, with mysterious sounds are added on top. This is me describing the first minute and a half or so of the first song. And yet the transitions make so much sense and are done without corrupting at all the atmosphere Make A Rising manage to preserve throughout the entire album. The album manage to swiftly shift between near-classical pieces such as "Woodsong Part One"- which I really mean when I say that this is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have heard in my life, to utterly bizarre time-shift changes and bassy synth pads in "Bradford's Big Boatride"- a track that doesn't shame itself with it's confounding psychedelic freakouts and weird vocal passages.

When the closing moments "How 'Bout a Love Supreme" closes off and rolls into the "epilogue" which is "Woodsong Part Two" you are very much aware of the massive accomplishment Make A Rising have managed to pull off here. They deliver a sound here which is so much their own it while being so strangely all-encompassing that for that alone the album should be given a spin, but the songwriting here is so sharp, so heart-wrenching, that this is more than a unique album, it is a damn good album as well.

It is about time I reviewed this utterly wonderful and strange album. An album that has accompanied me in the last few years or so and has without a doubt changed changed the way I've seen music completely. Make A Rising are a strange breed. It is almost as if the Beach Boys became massive fans of Henry Cow and decided to release an album with today's more modern sounds. A combination of bizarre and awe-inspiring piano ballads with hard-hitting and strange instrumental patterns with an almost indie style of song- writing. It is a brew that took me a while to accept and understand, but once it hit me it was a slap to the face- this is one of the most original sounding albums of the 21st century; playful and filled with the strange childlike wonder that frankly I have a soft spot for. "Infinite Ellipse And Head With Open Fontanel" is an album that I think should be in any pop music fan's collection as much as it should be in any prog and RIO's fans "classic collection".

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