Similar to Sugar Pill

Kumquat's 2007 album found Fred Church again having fun with the province of sample-based dance experimentation, sometimes in the most calm or melancholy of ways. "Herbert Hoover" features crackling samples of, presumably, the president in question, speaking of the threat of war and death while loops of acoustic guitar and beats play below. In general, Kumquat's songs do feel like just that: songs, as opposed to constructions of open-ended experiments or audio theater. The music often feels like a blend of lush Top 40 experiments from the '80s intermingled with the breakbeat obsessions familiar from the late '90s as alternative came to grips with hip-hop's dominance, yet given a further, different spin via Church's own obsessions. Thus the voice extolling various cooking ingredients on "About My Spices" is cut to the flow of the gentle beat rather than completely transmogrified, while the traded-off boy and man voices on "We Are the Aliens," along with the vocals, make for a funny rather than creepy exercise. There's also a nice bit of self-referencing with "Big Honking Radio," as a voice spells out "Big Kumquat" while the band name gets cited as an instrument.