An aptly titled debut record from a duo with a penchant for lush, moody, and surprisingly affecting trip-hop.
They couldn't have picked a better title. Eyelid Movies, the debut LP from the self-proclaimed "street beat" duo Phantogram, is a lush and evocative thumper indebted to the sultry side of Moby's Play. Riding a steady trip-hop inspired groove, the hushed and mostly mellow Eyelid Movies seems a fine companion piece to a long stroll or something more sedentary and meditative; point being, it sounds great in the background.
But lean a little closer and you'll find plenty about Eyelid Movies to get swept up in. Behind the synth wash are shades of Portishead crackle, Dust Brothers clutter, even a little late-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs geek glamour. "Street beat" seems to be a nice way to gloss over the fact that this is, at its core, a trip-hop record, a genre that Massive Attack's latest seemed to suggest had moved well past its use-by date. But Eyelid Movies, although decidedly a nighttime record, doesn't lean on heavy-lidded noir or string-led psychodrama to get its grooves across. It gets messy, sweet, and a little weird; with most trip-hop, the best you could hope for would be two out of three. Try ignoring Eyelid Movies too long, and something will reach out and shake you a bit.
Take, for instance, opener "Mouthful of Diamonds", which matches an alluringly buzzy backdrop with Sarah Barthel's breathy vocal. You could just as easily get lost in her voice or trip out on the oddly loping, slightly off-kilter synth line that underpins the whole thing. Or the ratchety thunk of "When I'm Small", which suggests a funky Odelay cut as sung by Martina Topley-Bird. Rife with sonic detail but not overrun by it, they'd still be fine songs without all the toppings. But Barthel and partner/producer Josh Carter find ways to dress the songs up without weighing them down. They can be emotionally affecting-- the "should've been easier on you" chorus of the Carter-sung "Turn It Off" is a heartbreaker-- and they can be just plain strange. The xx, with their slinky trickle of spy guitars and frequent collision of boy-girl vocals, are probably Phantogram's closest contemporaries, but there's a self-serious intensity in the xx that's lacking here. It's hard to imagine Romy and Oliver from the latter band pulling out the Weenish vocal of "Running From the Cops", and harder still to imagine them pulling it off without cracking a rare smile.
Eyelid Movies runs a tad long. This many breakbeat-based numbers in a row can be numbing, and the strong currents of melody that run over the first two thirds of the LP subside a bit toward the back, giving way to atmosphere. And Carter doesn't have quite the voice Barthel has, a fact of which he seems aware. He's smart to dress his voice up in effects, and smarter still to spend so much time singing in tandem with Barthel. But the best bits of Eyelid Movies show range and attention to detail, so it's hard to care when they downshift into waves of serpentine sound. Eyelid Movies is a sumptuous, seductive record, easy to let fall into the background, sure, but easier still to fall into.