Songs for Ice Cream Trucks

The album title is neither metaphorical nor joking. Except for a brief vocal by Hearst's manager Claudia Gonson (also drummer and singer in the Magnetic Fields and Future Bible Heroes) on the opening track "Ice Cream" and Hearst's own slightly ragged vocals on the closing "Before I Drive Away," these 13 songs are instrumental evocations of the sound of ice cream trucks. Performed on glockenspiel, accordion, and the same sort of cheap, old-fashioned-sounding synths that most ice cream trucks play on their tinny, distorted speakers, these are brief, simple, playful tunes that would not sound out of place in the parks and suburban streets of summertime America. Hearst, half of the literary-minded indie duo One Ring Zero, has created a concept album of the type that most people will only listen to once or twice, but it's an endearing miniature that's really nowhere near so cutesy as the initial concept sounds.