The Proper Ornaments - Foxhole
Pitchfork 74
Looked at cynically, the Proper Ornaments is a great name for a band infatuated with their record collections—a group that decorates their spare little songs with only the most finely curated influences, like so many baubles on a tree. The Beatles’ White Album here, Pink Floyd’s Meddle there. The Beta Band here, Yo La Tengo there. The Velvet Underground everywhere.
But there’s no reason to be cynical about this London quartet. The Proper Ornaments are based primarily around the songwriting partnership of James Hoare (of Ultimate Painting and Veronica Falls) and Max Oscarnold. Unlike some of their ’60s-loving, vinyl-obsessed peers (Crystal Stilts, say, or looking back a little farther, Brian Jonestown Massacre), it’s possible to separate your appreciation of the Ornaments’ nifty influences from your appreciation of their songs. The pair craft beguilingly simple, guitar-driven psych-pop stitched together by gorgeous, laidback harmonies. Compared to their excellent 2014 album, Wooden Head, Foxhole turns down the six-string jangle and turns up the sad-sack vibes for a more intimate, lovelorn affair. This is a Sunday morning, lay-in-bed-’til-2 p.m. album—a big warm blanket of analog guitar and woolly harmony.
True, this kind of thing has been done many times before. But what’s remarkable about Foxhole is just how effortlessly the Proper Ornaments pull it off. (Of course, the band is well aware that making the effortful sound effortless was a major part of the Velvets’ mojo, too.) The Ornaments’ new focus on the piano smooths out the band’s rougher edges, giving songs like “Memories” and “Just a Dream” a seductively sad pallor. Hoare and Oscarnold’s sly guitar work remains the band’s centerpiece, however. On “The Frozen Stare” and “Cremated (Blown Away),” their supple electric guitars trade riffs like old friends at a bar.
The Ornaments take their time on Foxhole. Tunes built on layers of acoustic guitar, piano, and soft percussion unwind lazily, never drawing too much attention to themselves (see, in particular, “I Know You Know,” a dead ringer for a B-side from the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Stoned & Dethroned sessions). No one plays very hard, yet the melodies stick. As with Wooden Head, the Ornaments’ power lies in their restraint.
Despite all the comfy sounds, the band’s lyrical vision is chilly, dead-eyed, sinister. A near-suffocating sense of regret over lost love and good times past hangs over the entire record. On “Cremated,” Oscarnold longs to be turned to ash with his former lover, their remains dumped together in the same jar. The album title itself is a reference to the claustrophobic horrors of war: “Private, don’t speak/Don’t move at all/Keep your head down/In the foxhole,” Hoare sings on “Jeremy’s Song.”
All that gloom goes down easy, however. The Ornaments are rarely heavy-handed or solipsistic about their troubles. And anyway, it’s nostalgia—regret’s more hopeful, more sentimental cousin—that remains the record’s core concern. “See me in the back page of last year’s modern age,” Hoare sings on album standout “Back Pages,” positioning his band as both defiantly out of step with the status quo and dedicated to the ideals of an earlier, better time. The Ornaments are yet another in a long line of floppy-haired guitar bands flying the flag of a purer pop past, but they’re also, unmistakably, one of the better, least pretentious ones. Sometimes it pays to be grateful rather than cynical.
Wed Jan 18 06:00:00 GMT 2017Drowned In Sound 70
Not all bands start with a simple advert on a pin board. Take The Proper Ornaments. One day, Max Oscarnold, who mans the synths in Brighton avant-rockers TOY, walked into a vintage clothing store with a 'troubled' girlfriend. Oscarnold was asked by said girlfriend to distract the clerk so she could steal a pair of boots. The clerk, however, happened to be James Hoare, the crazy prolific songsmith of Veronica Falls and more recently, Ultimate Painting.
Fortuitously, Hoare was passing his time reading Up-Tight, a book about The Velvet Underground by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga. Safe to say, Oscarnold's curiosity was piqued. The two hit it off instantly and well… let's just say them shiny, shiny boots stayed right where they were stored.
Like a proper pair of boots, The Proper Ornaments' second effort Foxhole is a noticeably more polished outing compared to predecessor Wooden Head. Gone are the raggedy fringes of distortion and sepia-toned textures, making way for soft, velvety pop classicism. Docile strummers like 'Just A Dream' and 'When We Were Young' evoke that typical Sixties West Coast levity, with Hoare's dreary vocals anchoring subtle shifts in melody. The album seems to deliberately drift in this tranquil state, with some well-designated, deft takeoffs here and there; the ethereal synth proliferations of 1969 and the baroque piano dirges of Memories being the most notable.
Indeed, Foxhole is beautiful, almost in that unabashedly quaint sense. Hoare and Oscarnold have opted for a wider sonic palette and operating space, giving their songs added depth with piano and acoustic guitars. Despite Foxhole's apparent unruffled dawdle, the recording process hit an unfortunate cul de sac. Hoare and Oscarnold were left stuck in the mud after they recorded drums and bass on an – unbeknownst to them – broken 8- track recorder. Just like that, all that time and money spent on recording was for naught. Concurrently, Hoare and Oscarnold's friendship deteriorated due to frenetic personal circumstances and hardships.
Just like The Proper Ornaments' genesis, a precarious situation ultimately proved beneficial. After the stormy clouds cleared, Hoare and Oscarnold re-recorded the whole thing in Hoare's makeshift bedroom studio. The economic recording space was at odds with The Proper Ornaments' expanded instrumentation, in essence coercing Oscarnold and Hoare's respective voices further together. Hymnal closer 'The Devils' and 'I Know You Now' evoke a sense of mutual acceptance, while at the same time acknowledging the encumbrance that coincided with it. Both tracks sound like some hermitic musical intervention between the two.
Foxhole by no means grabs you immediately. Its emotional highs are few and far between all that sun-drenched melodic crispness. This leaves a significant void between exerting yourself to listen attentively or letting the songs placidly wash over you. The album's quirks and murmurs of dissonance don't tug the interest enough to consider Foxhole to be far beyond the elemental pop Hoare and Oscarnold are already testimonial to. 'Bridge By the Tunnel' – in all its humdrum simplicity – is elemental pop done right however, immediately evoking a kindred allegory by this ubiquitous pop classic: to rise over troubled waters, the bridge needs to built from both sides.
With Foxhole, The Proper Ornaments often make going through the motions sound like some revelatory train of thought.
Tue Jan 17 09:22:22 GMT 2017