Foreign Born // Person To Person
Few things can beat the beginning of summer. That first heat wave of sunshine belting its way across the lawn mixing with wafts of BBQ, beer and sunscreen. It’s a melding of sensation, met and mingling with social enjoyment amongst the masses of sunbathers and swimmers, reveling in relaxation. There must be a soundtrack to this movement, something that seeps into the subconscious by way of association. Such is the case with the aptly named Person To Person, an album capable of spreading like wildfire over the coming summer months. There’s the possibility it’ll make some serious waves amongst the big boys, because while Grizzly Bear can at times be a bit too melancholy and slow, where Animal Collective can sometimes seem off the wall and finicky, Foreign Born’s easy indie-folk style fills the high profile void somewhere in the middle ground.Fitting amongst Band of Horses, My Morning Jacket and The Shins (not just alphabetically) the second LP from this troupe of Californians is a study in aural pleasure. Taking pages from all that is enjoyed in modern music and stapling them into their own playbook of audibly friendly folk rock, the album unfolds easily and is one that can be thrown on to soften the background for the summer. On the whole it can be taken as 40 minutes of similar sounding, sunshine evoking joy. Separately, there are a few really notable tracks, in particular “Lion’s Share” and “Wait In This Chair” to fulfill the slower “ballad” tracks, and “Winter Games”, a song that starts off feeling like Bowie’s “Suffragette City” to me for some reason then quickly morphs into a hootenanny complete with pot & pan percussion and harmonized vocals that sounds one blown bell jar short of the Country Bear Jamboree (ooh, video idea anyone?). Big standouts of the album are definitely “Early Warnings” and “Vacationing People”. The former sounds like an island romp with an African lead trickling throughout. The latter unfolds like a road trip in your dingy camper filled with grinning eyes peeking from behind your most colorful ray-bans. The song was virtually constructed for 16mm home video footage.
It’ll remain to be seen if Person To Person’s charm will outlast the summer months, but during that time, it’s sure to please more than just the ears at the neighborhood pool.
