PARENTHETICAL GIRLS
ENTANGLEMENTS

TOM120 | released: 09/09/2008 | CD
  via Anost (Europe)
  via SCD (USA)

analoguemagazine

Parenthetical girls - Entanglements

br> Continuing the baroque revival with lush orchestral arrangements, perverse lyrics and a hodgepodge of eclectic instrumentation - Parenthetical Girls third LP ‘Entanglements’, ripe with snatches of verse and vocal phrasing referencing pop’s credibly melodic lunatic fringe (from Kate Bush to the Smiths), is an intricate if occasionally overloaded enterprise. It’s as though someone sat frontman Zac Pennington down and told him he had one final stab at an album, and in terror he threw a career full of instrumental experimentation behind his Connor Oberst meets Travis Morrison falsetto. Over the top production is simultaneously ‘Entanglements’ greatest strength and weakness. At its best, as on the dreamy pedorastic ballad ‘Avenue of Trees’, or the multiplicitously referential ‘Song for Ellie Greenwich’, or on Penningston’s wonderful reimagining of Michel Legrand chamberpop staple ‘Windmills of Your Mind’; ‘Entanglements’ is a candy coloured clown - tumbling through conceptually driven lyrics and multigenre medleys with knowing delight. But where it falls down, as on the Dresden Dolls style dirge ‘Abandoning’, or the Fiona Appleishly overwritten ‘Gut Symmetries’, the album can seem top heavy and cloying in a way that eschews the unpretentious evocativeness of the best of its precursors. That said, ‘Entanglements’ is an intriguingly dense listen, highly recommended for the Jon Brion / Andrew Bird retinue, and fans of perverse, delicious, instrumental pop everywhere.

http://www.analoguemagazine.com/reviews/parenthetical-girls-entanglements%E2%80%A8%E2%80%A8/