For an album entitled Enemies, Pele's newest record sure sounds rather friendly! "Crisis Win," with its crunchy, upbeat drums and fast-paced beat, is certainly one of the happiest, most joyous instrumentals I've heard in a long, long time. Luckily, that's not a fluke, either, as that peppy, upbeat nature sticks around through the rest of Enemies.
Of course, who knows if the album's joy isn't derived, in some part, from the fact that the album was (supposedly) recorded in a woman's locker room. (Really!) Okay, I'll ixnay on the snarky, because this is really a lovely little record. Enemies is full of musical highs and lows and ebbs and flows and ups and downs and turn-arounds that are inspiring, uplifting, soothing, and doesn't sound a thing like Tortoise! And, believe me, that's a totally good thing. I'm glad that bands have stopped trying to take up residence inside that shell-jazz sound and are doing, well, their own thing. Of course, Pele's been around a bit, so you could argue the influence thing, but, really, when you hear the term "indie-jazz" or something referring to "indie rock with a hint of jazz," what name immediatly comes to mind? Yup. And Pele aren't that, so rest easy, o yea weary of genre associations!
For those moments when you just want to chill, because life has given you a stress-fill, then you could really, really do worse than to check out Enemies. And though I don't know why I think this, but at times I could feel the long shadow of Nanna over my shoulder. Maybe it's the label, or maybe it's the chord progression, I don't know, but could this possibly be the jazz-rock instrumental version of......oh, I'll just shut up now.
---Joseph Kyle
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