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MH-259 Head Like A Kite - There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere  There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere, Head Like A Kite’s second full-length album, and first for Mush, is an expert blend of electronic rock production and pure pop-songcraft built on a bed of pillaged found-sound from cities the band visited on their 2006 US tour. No stranger to sharing the stage with big names on national and international turf, ringmaster Dave Einmo has assembled some of Seattle’s finest for the album including members of The Long Winters, Smoosh, Radio 4, Crooked Fingers, and Preston School Of Industry. Whether it be guest vocals from Asya Smoosh and Graig Markel, added inspiration from touring drummer Trent Moorman, or the production of Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine) each track is flavored with the perfect additions to the epic songwriting and big-beat electronic production that is Head Like A Kite’s forte. There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere strikes the balance between art and craft and is the finest sonic road-trip in the Mush catalog. |
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| Reviews Summary |
| Quite possibly the best release out of the Northwest this year - KEXP / A true genre-twisted party album that appropriately captures the sounds of an eclectic America - Urb / The dreamy soundtrack to your imaginary trip into space - The Stranger / It deserves a lot of indie play - Pop Matters / Laughter’s friskiness is refreshing - AP |
| “This is not a repetition,” declares a vintage recording on “Everyday Should Be a Costume Party” from Head Like a Kite’s sophomore effort, There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere. The statement is both ironic and true: ironic because it is in fact a repetition of the old recording, and true because, stylistically, Dave Einmo never once repeats himself in the album. Style, melody, instrumentation—nothing is continuous from track to track, to a ridiculous degree. From the rock-electro fusion of “We Were So Entangled” to the cliché mainstream rock hit in “Big FM Radio Hit” to the hip-hop of “Listen Young Stunners”, There Is Loud Laughter is a schizophrenic album if there ever was one. Einmo is known for drawing inspiration from a series of films that featured quick-cuts, but this is too much. It feels like a dossier of music, a mirror image of current hits and popular bands. The power chords of “Big FM Radio Hit” could be any radio-friendly mainstream rock hit (Foo Fighters, Goo Goo Dolls, whatever), while the leading guitar lick of “Six Bags of Confetti” is much too close to a similar Rolling Stones track to be a coincidence. There Is Loud Laughter rings of The Teddybears’ short attention span, switching from genre to genre so quickly and effortlessly one wonders if it’s really the same band throughout. From hip-hop fusion similar to the Gorillaz, to the Sonic Youth mimicry on “Daydream Vacation” (combining Daydream Nation’s sprawling guitars with too-cool female vocals), the many-sided face of Head Like a Kite can be a bit much to take in. There is little consistency to be found, except that all the songs are surprisingly good--so be careful not to write the effort off too quickly. If you can get over the quick genre switches, There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere perhaps deserves a little repetition. - Soundcheck Magazine |
