IDAHO
We don't know whether Idaho Mastermind Jeff Martin is in fact the great-grandson
of the inventor of Coca Cola, as many have told us. If this were the
case, "We were young and needed the money" simply wouldn't really make
sense as the title of Idaho's last album.
When the CD arrived on our desk and we read that Idaho are actually
from California, we did wonder a little… Idaho? From California? That
wasn't quite right, was it? Our bewilderment grew further when we slotted
the disk into the player and realised that the national A&R departments
apparently still hadn't woken up from their by now well-known thousand-year
long hibernation. Okay, one could have encountered the band previously
on a few Spex samplers, but only the real hunters and gatherers had
an Idaho album in their collections. And they surely guarded it jealously!
Now they can add another one: it's called Vieux Carré, and it comes
from here, from Kalinkaland. But before we tell you more about the album,
let's introduce the band first:
For years, Idaho have stood for a completely unique kind of guitar
music, the kind that never goes out of fashion or passes its sell-by
date. Starting in the wake of what was then Slo-Core, Idaho have since
grown and changed into real Pop-strategists, creating magical yet unassuming
songs somewhere between atmosphere and melody. Along the way, they collect
rave reviews, from Melody Maker ("Astonishing and timeless"), Spex ("melancholic
guitar music, roaming into unbelievable distances"), to Libération,
who in 2000 called Hearts of Palm one of the top five records of the
year. Musical guests, from Smashing Pumpkins member Melissa auf der
Maur to REM/Beck drummer Joey Waronker, come and go, but Co-founder
Jeff Martin - whose melancholic, whispering voice and yearning lyrics
are at the heart of Idaho's elegance and courage - remains the constant.
Between friends: it's obvious that with Vieux Carré, Idaho have gained
for themselves gallery seats in the theatre of Rock. Jeff Martin shapes
the sound as a sleepwalking shiver, challenging singer, and with spherical,
yet sharp-edged electric as well as acoustic guitars. The pieces seem
like torn whisps of clouds in the sky, somewhere between David Sylvian
and Kurt Cobain, between bittersweet ballads ("Before you go") and passionate
Indie-Rock ("Flat Top"). Try copying that!
Vieux Carré is an album that makes a statement, in 58 minutes, intensive
and entrancingly beautiful. A gateway drug, a moment of life in real
life. This is the stuff that makes us better people…
