Camofleur

Released

For their last album, Gastr del Sol figured that pop music was the wild frontier. Previous albums had worked with abstraction, experimentation, tape music, minimalism, folksiness, concrete poetry – pretty much anything could happen. Why not try to write pop? Unsurprisingly, David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke’s idea of pop wasn’t too much like anyone else’s, though they certainly understood the devices and structures of popular music; they were simply more Van Dyke Parks than Brian Wilson. Camofleur’s rich beauty feels borne of internal struggle, though its breeziness – remember, this was a time when indie rock was discovering Brazilian music – and its voluptuousness is what ultimately resonates. An extra layer of electronic intervention, from Markus Popp of Oval, enriches things by unsettling the listener; why is that sound over there glitching out?

Jon Dale