Marshmallow Coast
Seniors and Juniors
Kindercore Records

Anyone with traumatic memories from childhood and youth at school? Here's a conceptual(?) album about school days. Marshmallow Coast is Andy Gonzales, who also use to appear as a member of Of Montreal and The Music Tapes, supported by Kevin Barnes (Of Montreal), Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel) and others, which means another project related to the Elephant Six Recording Co.

Gonzales, claiming a wide musical specter of inspiration (Ravel, Eric Satie, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson), has come up with a strange little album with 13 pieces of music on it. The compositions are quite simple in style, mostly with piano and/or guitar only, plus vocals of course. The album seems to be about one day in school, starting with getting there in the morning, and ending with going home in the afternoon (an then it's time to do some home-work...). The songs have titles like Off to School, Creative Writing, and Home from School, and most of them are really vague and sketch-like. Andy's world of creativity must be a "different" place. Mashed Potato Light (sic) is quite close to what his best friend Julian Koster is up to with The Music Tapes. While the instrumental Bizzare Classical (I and II) do have some bizzare twists and turns through classical references.

The best song on Seniors and Juniors is Little Pythagoras, sounding like 10 CC on a shoe-string budget. The song stands out from the rest of the album, sounding more like a "normal" song. However, I guess this record is for the reeeeeeally interested only (say, if you thought The Music Tapes made the album of the 90s). Me, I'm dropping out of school.

Copyright © 2000 Håvard Oppøyen