International Falls Achievement

[Self-released; 2007]

Rating: 3/5

Styles: nostalgic, indie pop
Others: Destroyer, Guided by Voices, Aislers Set

Most mediocre indie pop can be traced back to a single cause and reaction. Like a Rube Goldberg machine of second-rate formulas, a verse will be flung out into a cavity of clumsily repeated power chords, spiral down through a knit-wool chorus of nasal congested sighs, be channeled in to a stream of diluted verses that somehow justify rhyming “girl” with “girl,” until it finally flops into a pit of acoustic outro strums: a lifeless corpse of AABA pop refuse. Somewhere in Middle America a fifteen-year-old will have placed his sebaceous little fingers into a G chord and begun this cycle. Somewhere in Chicago an electro-acoustic trio will have created the second of five successful Pedro the Lion tribute albums based on this formula. Somewhere in my soul, a little piece of me will die.

But what’s interesting about International Falls isn’t musical formula; it’s how they both act according to and subvert standardized indie pop simultaneously. This slight revision of melodic stock is conveniently packaged into two categories: semi-nostalgic balladry and pop experimentation. At points you can trace chalk between these elements mid-song.

The ballads rely on accepted signifiers like acoustic guitars and brushed cymbals, which sway in the doorway like little brother to Dan Bejar’s Destroyer after coming clean about stealing his tape deck. I predict amateur zine writers across the country will hunt-and-peck their way to the following line: "Achievement achieves ______." Achievement achieves chamber pop percussion. Achievement achieves earnest boy-girl harmonies. Achievement achieves spider-fingered acoustic strumming. Yes, they do this. And yes, many bands do this equally well.

But if the album does anything extraordinarily well, it’s giving a strong case that similarity isn’t redundancy. While there is still a looming presence of typical indie formula in Achievement, International Falls manage to leap out of the purgatory of superfluous pop. Achievement is in this case the story of associating a familiar overarching indie pop style with the far less common mechanism of subtle gestures, in which International Falls respond to their own analog indie behaviorisms with well-produced structural tangents. Strobing bass lines cut through the customary acoustic strumming, synth-drenched outros straddle industrial drum beats and hand claps, and all moves together in a succinct and winding cogwheel of pop hooks. While their slight experimentative tendencies aren’t about to create a revolution, their combination of pop aesthetic and fresh indie rock arrangements raises them to a higher grade of interest.

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