MARGERINE ECLIPSE

The band's first full-length release of new compositions since the tragic death of Mary Hansen nearly two years before. Using an unusual and, of course, experimental engineering technique known as "dual mono" individual tracks are hard-panned to one of the two 'left' or 'right' channels giving them a mono feel despite the stereo sound. The effect of Lætitia Sadier covering all vocals, fore and background, is extraordinary for how little it makes Mary's loss seem. An extraordinary album on many levels.

1. "Vonal Declosion" (3:34) an amazing song with truly astonishing layers of vocals makes one confirm how important it is that Lætitia sing in her native French. Makes me realize how much I miss the "strings" and acoustic guitars of Dots and Loops and even Sound-Dust. (9.5/10)

2. "Need to Be" (4:50) the final minute downgrades an otherwise great song. (9/10)

3. "'...Sudden Stars'" (4:41) cool song with awesome Farfisa organ and complex keyboard weaves. (9/10)

4. "Cosmic Country Noir" (4:47) one of those stellar laid back groovin' tracks that has multiple parts, all equally charming and engaging. (9.5/10)

5. "La Demeure" (4:36) sparsely structured, this one, the 'Somewhere song', sneaks up on you. (9/10)

6. "Margerine Rock" (2:56) cheesy and too simple despite its overload of weird sound effects. Occasionally, even the gods show vulnerability. (6/10)

7. "The Man with 100 Cells" (3:47) smooth and soul-comforting. I'm a sucker for the Casiotone noises. Nice lyrics in English, too. (9/10)

8. "Margerine Melodie" (6:19) a kind of discofied ska beat supports a series of sensitive and pretty melodies--vocal and keyboard--but ultimately it fails to win over--despite its sublime midsection. (8.5/10)

9. "Hillbilly Motobike" (2:23) clavinet-based with a pop-click track, the opening section fails to engage and hypnotize, as was intended, and, uncharacteristically, it never really changes from there. (8/10)

10. "Feel and Triple" (4:53) slow guitar strums and drum machine support Lætitia's opening vocal before full drums and bouncy keys and bass pop in. Pretty nice groove. I like the instrumental sections, bridges and organ and lead guitar play best. (9/10)

11. "Bop Scotch" (3:59) another song with too many diverse ideas playing off (and, IMHO, against) each other. (7/10)

12. "Dear Marge" (6:56) First part (2:30) is okay. Second part is awesome. Third, ROLLING STONE "Miss You" section is tolerably good. (8/10)

An album that starts incredibly strongly but then looses its focus, magical chemistry and, ultimately, appeal. Seven great songs and five fair to middlin' ones do not a masterpiece make.

B-/a nice 3.5 star album; a nice addition to any progressive music collection that is recommended for its first half.

Going into this album the band decided to get back to basics. In their earliest days they recorded live as a band, and so this would be the direction taken here. They added a second keyboardist, allowing leader Tim Gane to focus more on the guitar. The two Post Rock legends John McEntire and Jim O'Rourke who had been involved with the recording process and production were not invited back. McEntire(TORTOISE) had been involved on the previous four studio albums. So changes aplenty. I was glad to see the guest horns that were on "Sound-Dust" were not invited back as well.

To quote Tim Gane "The making of this LP was dominated by one tragic event; the death of a great friend and band member Mary Hansen, shortly before we were due to start recording." Tim related that all of the instrumental music had been written before Mary's passing, but not all the lyrics. So that explains why this album is so uplifting and happy. That part was already done. Gane continues to tell that it was at one of those live in studio rehearsals that Martin showed up unexpectedly to tell them the news of Mary's passing.

Tim goes on "You'll have to excuse me if I don't have a perfect memory of what happened after that except to say that we stopped, packed up and went home. I don't remember what I was thinking about or what my state of mind was. Weeks passed before we collectively agreed on continuing to make music as a group and to carry on with this record specifically. Obviously nothing would be the same and the original ideas we had for the recording were dropped."

It's interesting that they decided to add these electronic pieces they call the Carlton idents. They had done these back in 1992 for Carlton Television, a series of futuristic sounding idents for a new season of programming they had coming up. Tim stumbled upon the demos for these and decided to incorporate them in some of the intros, outros and mid sections of songs on here. So the original live in studio thing was dropped. Just before the recordings began Tim decided to pan the speakers extreme left and right with nothing in the middle. "This led to the idea of having one version of the song on the left speaker and a second on the right speaker and the third 'version' would be the two combined."

The packaging here is so much better than on "Sound-Dust. In fact it's beyond the call of duty how much detailed information we get concerning this album. Like the album's title which has no meaning in relation the music. Like all of their album titles. Tim just liked it. This is about a dozen minutes shorter than "Sound-Dust" which I like, as it clocks in at over 53 minutes. Like "Sound- Dust" I can't say I'm in love at all with their music, but with "Margerine Eclipse" I at least have no issues with what I'm hearing and I quite like the warm and uplifting attitude. This is fun when you would expect a dark pall to be over this album. Not so.

Their last great record and worth a low 4 stars.