Work of the Month #8: Colleen - "Everyone Alive Wants Answers"

It's often the case that making up a biography for an artist turns out to be much more rewarding than the truth. To that end, I'm going to start writing this review before I do the obligatory background research on the mystery that is Colleen, frightened as I am to be let down by the actual story behind this group/band/woman/entity. Everyone Alive Wants Answers is one of those albums that has me quick-drawing on the "unlike anything I've heard" cliché, a curious album that catches my pop-oriented fancy even though it's clearly more Dominique or Richard-San territory. The cue cards read "glacial" and "ambient," but I'd rather make up my own interpretation.

The opening, self-titled track is, appropriately, a thesis statement of the record's approach, cutting in abruptly with a ragged-edged loop of what sounds like a harp played with a sharp rock. Loops like these are the foundation of Colleen's unusual sound, though to call them loops is pretty much a technical overstatement; more accurately, they'd be called skips. If Oval made music by meticulously scratching compact discs, Colleen's compositions appear to manifest themselves out of vinyl scratches, the repetitions coming less from ProTools Ctrl+V-ing than from a stylus sentenced to trace the same groove forever.

Many tracks add instrumentation of some sort over these backdrops, like the title song, which features soloing that sounds like an octopus tuning a piano in double time. Others add layers of malfunctioning records to build atmosphere like a slowcore DJ, "Ritournelle" weaving ellipses of soft vibraphone, eternally swelling strings, and dust particle crackles into an Elfman-esque score that's equal parts creepy and fantastical. Colleen's attic toybox seems bottomless: "One Night and It's Gone" has a "bassline" crafted from different tones of static hiss, "Nice and Simple" features a chorus of music boxes, while "Long Live Mice in the Metro" incorporates backwards tweaking and heavily treated effects without sacrificing organic warmth.

Chances are, there are modern compositional precedents for all of these sounds-- hell, some of them have modern Björk-asitional precedents even I've heard before. And while Everyone Alive Wants Answers is most definitely top-heavy, hitting its peak with the first two songs and losing focus as the rough-edged loops make fewer appearances, at 39 minutes it ends before one's iPod finger gets itchy. Thirteen tracks wrapped in a reassuring blanket of fuzz, it's the perfect headphones soundtrack to a bus ride through ultraviolet city snow.

Turns out Colleen is, in fact, a she, though it's a she confusingly named Cecile, and she's from Paris, which explains some of the exoticism. Instruments reported include glockenspiel, cello, Melodica, and music box, with nary an octopus to be seen. The truth is only a slight disappointment (at least it's not another unshaven guy with a Powerbook and a fiber-optic light show) but a letdown nonetheless, though it's no fair fight pitting actual biography against my commute-time imaginings in this post-liner notes age-- an age that suits Everyone Alive Wants Answers, one of those rare, truly evocative abstract pieces of art where every observer takes away their own interpretation, and is left feeling a little more special about their experience as a result.