Free Williamsburg

mAKE UP
Destination Love: Live at the Cold Rice
7,111 out of 10,000

Destination Love I have found you at last! So many months back I misplaced you. You were hidden in a plastic bag, balled up behind her piano. You never complained once. Now you’re back and I can listen to you and judge you!

Our narrative abruptly switches from a precious second person voice to a nice typical third person description of the album.

The mAKE UP, besides forcing me to perform clicking and ignoring operations for both my spelling and grammar checkers, make some pretty great records.My favorite is Sound Verite, with it’s huge live sound and soul moves. I also love Save Yourself, with it’s more novel (bordering on novelty) tunes about big fishes in a small pond and being pentagons in love and such. In Mass Mind is pretty damn good too. Their sound is always pretty live in the studio, but this appears to be a genuine live record, and while I don’t like as much as the other three, it’s still pretty good.

I guess the thing that holds me back is the poetry. One of Ian Svenonius aspects is his unrelenting arty earnestness. It’s so dead pan that what would be annoying in a lesser artist is fun. You never really know if he’s for real, and he never tips his hat. Still, reciting a poem every couple of songs is a bit much. “We can't be contained” is pretty cool, but lay off the hand held sheets of paper, Ian.

Still, there are the songs, and the singer. From “Here Comes The Judge”, the opener on, Svenonius screeches like a weasel possessed. He’s possessed by “The Gospel Yeh Yeh”, another aspect of the mAKE UP’s schtick, and while it’s hard to tell if it really means anything, the possession in there.

The band comes off like a clanky, raucous James Brown backing unit, which rocks for the most part, but the funky jangles sometimes seem satisfied with emulation. The production is poor, so it’s sometimes a little difficult to get to the quality of the tunes. At the end of the show “We gotta get off this rock”, “So Chocolately”, and “Destination: Luv” bring home that quality, poor production or no.

Welcome back, Destination Love. You may not be the favorite brother, but once you were lost, and now you are found.

-Dan Kilian