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George & Caplin, "He Really Got Through to Advertising"
On their latest, George & Caplin use electronics and guitars to create a lush yet unobtrusive album with few hard edges. Alternating between instrumental and vocal tracks, the songs have buoyant moments of familiarity, like fleeting fragments of a dream upon waking.
The album is uniformly good even if no songs in particular stand out from the others. The arrangements tend to shy away from vivid distinctions or extremes of any sort. Instead, they share a common hazy space somewhere between longing and regret, floating on drifting memories. The group paints in muted colors, mixing bittersweet melancholy with nostalgia.
Especially on a song like "Bluff Lake Forgotten," the group's songwriting strays from the obvious, concentrating instead on small, delicate melodies rather than big hooks. The result is surprisingly expansive, like a blurry wide-angle portrait of a landscape. Generally, the songs with vocals work a little better, such as "Highway Driveway" and "Nebraska Broadcasters," because the arrangements are a little livelier than those of the instrumentals. The title track in particular is a bit of a disappointment because the charm of its repetitive guitar quickly wears off and the drumbeat is a little dull. Yet perhaps the strongest track is also the closer, "Silhouettes Astray," which best incorporates vocals with the other instruments, ending the album on its highest note.
At just under half an hour, He Really Got Through to Advertising is a concise snapshot. The mood doesn't change too much throughout its course, but it’s presented in a digestible enough portion that that doesn’t detract from its enjoyment.
