Chairlift – Does You Inspire You album review from modmove

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Chairlift – Does You Inspire You
Does You Inspire You? Will this album inspire you? This is the kind of music that gets stamped by weary critics with such epithets as ‘quirky’, ‘out there’ and so on. This is not an easy set of songs to describe in a few words; there is a strong sense here of a young band stretching themselves in perhaps too many directions, from 80s synth-pop sounds like Evident Utensil, to the morose alt-country Don’t Give A Damn, to the impressive ambient weirdness of Ceiling Wax.

You would have heard the first part of the song Bruises as an iPod advertisement; as the song progresses, it becomes an interesting dialogue between Polachek and Aaron Pfenning about the bruises and salves of love. This is quite typical of the wit and thoughtfulness of the songs in general. Pfenning appears on a few songs, and this made me think of the way Einar used to insert himself beside Bjork’s vocals in the Sugarcubes, but with rather less abrasiveness in Pfenning’s case. Throughout the album’s strange haunted sounds and electronic beeps and beats, Caroline Polachek’s vocals work as melodic story telling in the fashion of daughters of darkness like PJ Harvey and Toni Halliday.

Does You Inspire You ultimately doesn’t quite hold all of its ambitions together in a uniformly successful set of songs. But there is a great deal of imagination and dark humour and experimentation here. Songs about earwigs, flying saucer hats, chameleon closets and the longevity of garbage, definitely deserve your attention.
Stas’ Wiatrowski
www.chairliftmusic.com
www.myspace.com

Chairlift – Planet Health Video Clip

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