Feather explodes with ‘Floating Parade’
With the explosion of bands like the Strokes and the Raveonettes, lo-fi just doesn’t mean what it used to. Once the moniker of the impassioned bedroom rock of bands like Guided By Voices, the term now means little more than some well planned fuzz and carefully compressed vocals that lead to a contrived state of disorder. While the world wallows in this sad state of affairs, the Unicorn Feather is a band of revolutionaries.
The Unicorn Feather is both big and small. Small in that the band is Idaho native Elijah Jensen, large in that the energy of his live show ranks just below Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A born performer, Jensen is able to command the audience with his emotive voice, incorporating influences as diverse as Michael Stipe’s disaffected mumble on the rollicking “Bad News” to Eliot Smith’s affected croon on “You’re Invisible Now.”
The Unicorn Feather takes the lessons learned from Jensen’s last band, Pajama Party in a Haunted Hive, and uses them to great effect. While always a pleasant listen, a Pajama Party in a Haunted Hive album was like listening to an indie retrospective – a collage of sounds, none of which were ever really unique to the band. Jensen finds his stride in Unicorn Feather, developing a sound that houses not just rock influence but gospel, dance, and Americana as well.
The end result is “The Floating Parade,” a masterful debut album that is as challenging as it is catchy. A healthy dose of pop sensibility pervades the release, giving it a light mood that prevents Jensen’s ever being weighed down by his lofty ambitions.
The Unicorn Feather is the best thing to come out of Idaho since Built to Spill, and one can only hope that Jensen is every bit as successful as his predecessors. Signed to Coming in Second, Feather’s first album, is available at www.cominginsecond.com. So hurry and buy “The Floating Parade.” Feather has already opened for Pedro the Lion and Low, and you may not have much longer to say, “I knew them when…”
Zach Pendleton’s “The Best You’ve Never Heard” Column appears weekly in Diversions. Comments and questions can be sent to him at zachp@cc.usu.edu.