Album Review: Candy Bars

Candy Bars - On Cutting Ti-Gers in Half and Understanding Narravation
(2006, New Granada Records)

I don't even know where to start. Most people read the first few scentences of an album review, just enough to get the gist of a band's basic style, and then move on. That would be the wrong thing to do in this case. You see a certain musical trio from Tampa called Candy Bars has come along with a debut album that is completely one thing without be everything you're tired of about that one thing. That one thing (and stick with me to the end on this) is dreamy, orchestral dream pop.
You'd be right to say that the genre's resurgence is getting old fast. Most of the groups sound identical and are steeped in cliche. What Candy Bars reminds us is that ANY genre, no matter how stagnant, still has the potential to be thrilling and vital as long as there is genuine effort by the artist to find his or her own voice. In the case of Candy Bars that voice is the menacingly eerie whisper of vocalist Daniel Martinez.
With their debut, On Cutting Ti-Gers in Half and Understanding Narravation, the members of Candy Bars have restored some of the mystery to psychodellic pop. They've made a melancholy album of remarkable textural depth that sinks its hooks deeper into your heart with each repeat listening. The music swells and unfurls in a breathingly loose and organic fashion without transgressing into long-winded freeform boredom. The core instrumentation consists of guitar, drums and cello although there's plenty of auxillary layering throughout the album's 11 tracks making On Cutting Ti-Gers far more rewarding through the magic of stereo headphones.
As for the Martinez's lyrics, they almost make sense some of the time and then suddenly flee from grasp and into a surreal, semi-decipherable haze. With the typical passage being in the vein of, "A closed-eye Houdini with a deck of breath plays silk harp in the morning." you should know that these words have no intention of revealing any sort of meaning. Their true function is that of conjuring of vivid but mysterious imagery which may sort of allude to whatever the song is about if indeed it is about anything....ahem.
At it's lowest point On Cutting Ti-Gers... is still a damn good recording and although the album's second half isn't nearly as rivetting as the first, there's still quite a bit of melody and dreaminess to be enjoyed. It isn't quite slowcore, it isn't quite psychodellia and it isn't quite chamber pop but Candy Bars incorperates elements of all three genres into something at once distinctive and familiar.