The Caribbean. Shadowy quintet (perhaps trio?) draped in velvet enigma.
Or maybe just Steely Dan on a light-beer budget, faceless contributors
scattered hither and yon, submitting stealthy sonic fragments via
telephone transmissions and paper-airplane parachute drops. Descended
from primo D.C. agitpop, old-school division. Certainly of the Dischord
tribe (see: the flip attitude of the Make-Up or Jawbox's raw edge). But
also Eggs. And Tsunami. The coy pop-culture savvy of Unrest (witness
witty wordplay on “Annunciator Zone”: “All those great Chicago bands
like King Crimson and Kraftwerk or that one that sounds like
Tortoise”). Third albums. The landscape littered with the bleached
skeletons of Zen Arcade and Zenyatta Mondatta. Third. Or even III. But
this—History's First Know-It-All—is knowing. Cynical, yet naively
hopeful. Apropos of crushed feelings. Household appliances. Class of
‘83, UCLA. All lovingly rendered in illegible, handwritten
scribble-scrawl and plunked down erect beside sounds both found (celery
crunching) and created (piano backdrops, drum stutters, nylon-stringed
guitar webs). Glorious eclecticism or hipster fence-straddling? More
the former than latter. Purposefully arcane and brainy-sounding
hangtags: “Fresh Out Of Travel Agent School.” “It's Unlikely To Settle
The Difference.” (Todd Rundgren fans, in this day and age? Why not?)
The verdict: difficult but rewarding, albeit in that William Carlos
Williams kind of way. So much depends upon/A third longplayer/Glazed
with dour postures/Beside the white women.
-- Magnet
You're forced to occupy their barren pop architecture.... You
don't understand it, but, though you might not admit it, you do
hope it will understand you. Or at least not destroy you.... You feel
like there's a real live pop song in there somewhere, but it
seems that most of the essential moments have been recorded over with
silence or incidental noise. There's obviously still a skeleton
to hang a song on, but you start to wonder whether you're the one who
was supposed to bring it.... These songs are for real, but they're not
about disappointment, or complacency, or shame, or attention, or glee.
They're about themselves. Without ironic distance, such oblique
experiments can seem exhausting. But only on the giving end: it takes a
humble and prolific writer, some cunning musicians, a very patient
engineer, and an overarching commitment to self-censorship to pull an
album like this off.
-- Pitchfork
The brilliance of the Caribbean is subtle. It never jumps out at you, but it's always there, hidden behind Kentoff's off-kilter vocals. The more you pay attention (headphones help), the more you start to hear the creative production flourishes and masterful instrumentation. There's no denying that this is progressive pop music made for the thinking fan and therefore may be difficult for the masses to grasp, but you often have to work for the good stuff.
--Harp
They're taking Brill Building songs and writing them in invisible
ink, turning jazz standards into Twilight Zone episodes, turning folk
songs into clouds of fog.
-- PopMatters
Let us be clear about this:
Plastic Explosives is one of the finest recent records we've found,
from any act, local or otherwise. (It) is beautiful, plain and simple,
and a treat to listen to passively. It keeps gently reminding you,
though, just how subtly rich its songs are, how much it has to offer.
It's a masterpiece, tucked away in and revealing the crowded streets
and quiet record stores of the District.
-- DCist
If I had to contrive a term for the music of The Caribbean, it would be
“storycore.” If you sit down with the lyric
sheet --- and you should, you should --- you'll find a unique hybrid of
narrative specificity and mischievous surrealism. As a
songwriter, Michael Kentoff has quietly and modestly (but, make no
mistake, deliberately) struck upon his own language.
Caribbean songs are peppered with invented names and terms, populated
by bureaucrats, clerks, spies, actresses who moonlight as spies, light
bulbs and their switches, all glimpsed sideways with sympathy and
bemusement, all in the middle of something happening. For the
most part, the stories don't appear to have beginnings or endings as
far as I can suss. Kentoff is primarily concerned with the
middle. As a result, the words read like a Raymond Carver
anthology that fell in the pool and became almost too blurry to make
out. Perhaps some musicologist historian of the future will spend
time to dissect the Caribbean's curious mythology. Maybe then
we'll learn how much of it was real and how much imagination.
Until then, just enjoy the tunes.
-- Chad Clark (Beauty Pill, Silver Sonya Studios)
The songs here have an uncanny flow from one to the next, to the point
where they feel indelibly joined, a feeling heightened by the little
sketchy instrumentals that cushion them from each other like sonic
packing peanuts. After three albums and a couple of EPs, the Caribbean
sound at home in this strange little white-collar rock place they've
built for themselves. It's the folk music of the new American service
economy.
-- Pitchfork (separate review)
Unabashed pop with post-rock production and hints at alt-country twang,
the five tracks here all hit the perfect note at least once, some
holding it for the song's length.... A perfect soundtrack for cooking,
cleaning, making out, sleeping in, driving, sitting on your porch,
counting stars, breathing, existing.
-- Stylus
