Introspective Raincoat Student Music

Vocalist Silvia Rider and multi-instrumentalist Ben Bohm issued their second release as Sugarplum Fairies at the end of 2003, well after the barely seen appearance of Flake in 1998. For all intents and purposes a debut, then, it's not surprising that Introspective Raincoat Student Music might struggle to carve itself an identity. Rider's vocal demeanor is a dead ringer for that of Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, a comparison that's as accurate as it is obvious. The album trades in simply strummed shoegaze that expends as little energy as possible; its 15 songs feel much longer than their 53:20 total running time, somehow managing to trade in both blandness and bloat. That's not to say that they're bad songs, just that they tend too heavily toward the directionless and somnambulant. Typical are tunes like "Tomorrow's Always One Day Late" and "4 AM and Nothing New" that drag and never lift off, though the latter's backmasked guitar effects hint at the duo's production ambitions. Co-producer Bernhard Penzias mans a couple of the better tracks, as faint, sharp strings lend tension to "Sugarfree"'s nicely concise metaphors while "Sticky Summer" benefits from a bustling arrangement — one that is simultaneously sabotaged, however, by Rider's duet partner, Georg Altziebler, whose pitch-unfriendly effort just isn't up to the task of sharing a lead vocal. For every winning melody like "#2 Kraft Paperbag" there's a moment that's totally forgettable, rendering this record mildly pleasant but dismissible. Rider and Bohm would come far more into their own three years later on the follow-up, Country International Records.