Welcome to the November edition of Three Stars. Tomorrow, we’ll have an interview with DJ Will Eastman, on Thursday we’ll take a look at the Routineers, and today we discuss The Caribbean and their recently released album, Plastic Explosives.
Plastic Explosives, The Caribbean
We want to get the details out of the way first. The Caribbean is a local band, composed of members of a handful of local acts past and present, including Townies, Smart Went Crazy, and The Foreign Press. Plastic Explosives is their third full-length, an 18 track mix of songs, distilled themes, and sound selections. You can buy it here. There, details covered, and we’re free to write about this album properly.
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’s an album that sneaks up on you. On listening, you find yourself looking for comparisons in other bands. There’s the sonic playfulness and experimentation of a Neutral Milk Hotel or Wilco circa Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. There’s the songwriting facility and harmonic dexterity of The Shins. There’s a Beta Band like use of rhythm, and a post-rock way in which songs are deconstructed and reformed within tracks and on adjacent themes. But the comparisons aren’t satisfactory. Somehow, the band has managed to craft a sound that’s strikingly unique while still endearingly listenable.
The album has been described as minimalist, but that’s a cleverly crafted illusion, and a tribute both to the production and the songwriting. There’s a startling array of instrumentation on each track, but the songs never come across as busy. They invite you to pick apart the various contributions, the string tracks, the keyboards, the beatbox rhythms. They draw you deep into the construction of each song, so that when the parts rise and mix into smooth, grand chords, you’re completely taken aback and left with nothing but an irresistable melody. The album is effortlessly daring; it’s challenging and accessible all at once.
Lead vocalist Michael Kentoff’s lyrics, breathily delivered, are compelling in their own way. He makes the familiar unfamiliar and romantic, making art of the commonplace, the business trip, the convention hall, our nondescript daily struggles. His vocal melodies display the same perfect quirkiness as the instrumentals, repeatedly finding surprising notes that somehow work, and the variations in his and the band’s style and volume move seamlessly through the album, such that you’re left at the end with the distinct sensation of having learned something about music, of having gained knowledge, but not in an antiseptic way.
Plastic Explosives 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.
