Dance Positive

Album Review

Even by Karl Blau's normal standards, Dance Positive is a weirdly insular little record. Although increasingly better known to a more mainstream audience as a key member of Laura Veirs' backing band, the Saltbreakers, Blau first gained notice as one third of D+, the trio that singer and guitarist Bret Lunsford formed with Blau and drummer Phil Elvrum (the Microphones) after Beat Happening broke up. Dance Positive consists of Lunsford-penned songs from the first four D+ records, completely reworked in the amiably offbeat style of Blau's previous three solo albums. Defiantly lo-fi almost to the point of being a rumbling mess, featuring almost dub-like overuse of echo and reverb, loose and quasi-jazzy horn sections, and Blau's inventive bass playing and loopy, rambling, vaguely stoned-sounding falsetto vocals at the center of the otherwise difficult to navigate sound mix, Dance Positive transforms Lunsford's songs entirely, into tracks that would have fit perfectly onto any of Blau's earlier, self-penned records. Blau even reworks the vocal melodies and in some cases does a cut-and-paste job on the lyrics, further mutating the songs to fit his own ends. As a result, it's not necessary to be familiar with the D+ originals to get into Dance Positive, but an appreciation of Blau's willfully quirky aesthetic is a big help.