John Kill & the Microscopic Lullaby

Album Review

Muncie, IN, is the sort of small college town (like Athens, GA, or Lawrence, KS) where bands start up largely out of a lack of much else to do. Freed from the temptation to follow the trends of the moment, these bands can occasionally grow so insular and weird that unless you happen to know the songwriters personally, it's near impossible to tell just what they're on about. Released in 2007, Addicts Stuck in Traffic suggested that this might be the fate of Everthus the Deadbeats, but the band's far superior full-length debut, John Kill and the Microscopic Lullaby, is both even odder and, crucially, far more accessible than the debut EP. Rather than the sense of near-random weirdness for its own sake that occasionally plagued the EP, John Kill and the Microscopic Lullaby integrates its more unusual aspects smoothly into the well-arranged, carefully constructed songs, such as the sudden vocal chorale that at one point overtakes the limpid chamber pop of "Twenty-Three." Similarly, more purely atmospheric passages like the electronic pulses of "General L.C.D. Quartz" and the dreamy psychedelic waltz "Sweetie" are kept brief enough to avoid bogging down the generally more song-oriented flow. Echoes of everyone from the Olivia Tremor Control's homemade tape loop anarchy to Tom Waits' clanking junkyard instrumentation to 10cc's quirky but slick prog pop can be found on these 15 varied tunes. The album's press notes claim that leader John Muylle's lyrics form a loosely constructed concept album, something about the symbolic dreams of the fictional character John Kill. In reality, being able to follow the story clearly almost never has any bearing on the listener's enjoyment of a concept album, so the fairly impenetrable storyline can be safely ignored without losing any of the album's oddball charms, which are legion.