The oddness of Zeena Parkins’ music — whether solo or featured in an ensemble — is inimitable. Perhaps it’s the idiosyncratic sweetness of the harp and accordion (and the other hundred instruments she plays), Parkins’ ability to sonically morph these into whatever she chooses and / or the equally whimsical folks she surrounds herself with, but she makes you feel like you’re inside a music box (swiped from a curio collection in an antique trunk, hidden in great grandma’s attic), amidst a garden full of smiling pixies, right outside Hansel and Gretel’s captor’s house with the lure of danger ever-present. Her sound is always very intricate, delicate, something you want to examine with a looking glass, and prone to nervous fits that jerk you out of a comfort zone just as soon as you find it. In other words, her music is a seductive, sumptuous, bent reality.
Add the spices from the rest of The Adorables crew, including percussionist Shayna Dunkelman (Xiu Xiu, Balún, Pep Talk, etc.) and Max/MSP electronics genie Michael Carter aka Presish Moments (with peripheral collaborators Danny Blume on ukuleles, guitars and the production seat, Indian percussionists Deep Singh and Dave Sharma and vocalist Kristin Slipp), and we move to the fourth dimension.
“Constructed” comes out with a boom and Parkins in full glissando mode as everyone settles into a quasi-Tango heavily peppered with dive-bombing synthi squeals that eventually glitch apart the fabric of the recording. For twelve minutes, the piece flits between toe-tapping, field recordings (literally, I think we’re in a field), silence, with everyone having a chance to solo before Dunkelman ends it all with a triangle roll (processed with panning, slightly flanging effects, of course). The Adorables is capable of sweet, as heard on “Refracted”, where harp adopts a nimble koto-esque approach through Japanese harmonies; The Adorables is capable of ballistics, as heard on the Mancini cover, “Sophia”, with Parkins breaking out the Moog, the band laying into a groove of synthetic meets acoustic (a break-beat makes a brief appearance) to take the original’s sensuality and swagger to snarling sex. And The Adorables have some tracks that lie on the outskirts of everything, such as “Umea” where twee la-la vocals (think Stereolab) accompany a polyrhythm of tabla, crotales, a brief Muzak interlude and synth flutes — and then, without warning, we’re set in a wall of dulcimer attacks and sympathetic string drones.
Listening to The Adorables, I’m reminded of The House on the Rock, an attraction in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. The designer, Alex Jordan Jr., purportedly built the place as a middle finger to Frank Lloyd Wright after the latter insulted his work (“I wouldn’t hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop. You’re not capable.”) Part of what you pay to see is a curious, enormous mansion (edified on an mammoth slab of rock) where you’re ducking your head, plummeting through cave-like descents (very monastic wine cellar style), staring out stained glass positioned in strange spots, lounging with coffin-shaped (think 12th century) coffee tables and gigantic blown-glass mushroom lamps. The place was expanded some years later to include the world’s largest indoor carousel and a crap-ton of animatronic music making displays. For a few bucks, you can witness a large robotic octopus play The Beatles, a string orchestra, sans human performers, rocking out symphonies; think about your childhood visits to Chuck E. Cheese’s, where smiling mascots suddenly spring to life to play “Happy Birthday”, and multiply the experience by a hundred. These House on the Rock spectacles are really cool if you aren’t a sourpuss audio nerd and get upset that, though bows may be dragging across strings and drum sticks are hitting stuff, most of the music is run on a cheesy MIDI soundtrack (I guess the actual sound coming off these instruments was a bit faulty, out of tune…eerie for most touristy types).*
Dear Zeena, it would give the world great pleasure if you sought employment at House on the Rock; I can think of no other candidate to stitch up the flaws in this otherworldly, surreal enterprise.
* I wrote all of this before reading an interview with Parkins where she describes her band as “Disney Sun Ra”, “Like a big band playing super-lush film music.” So, Zeena, I think my invitation is fated. Meet you in Dodgeville with contract in hand.
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