Morella’s Forest

From Dayton with Love (Tooth & Nail)
by Jamie Kiffel

This forest is fuzzy with pop circuit noise and a dreamy techie nymph dancing in pink metallic sneakers. Sydney Rentz’ voice is sweet and echoey, with a through-the-wired-looking-glass head-spin on it. Gentle guitar strums and major key tones make sweet party noise fit for a laid-back beer bash at an artist’s college dorm. Under the crushed, dusty four-foot papier maché soup can and the Lucite mobile from last semester’s Interpreting the Modern Industrial Age, that girl named Charlie is filing down the necks of Sam Adamses to fill with flowers some other arty chick picked out back. Imagine Inger Lorre smoking pot. The one interesting aberration is a symphonic “Kids in America,” which, with reverberating bass and strings, sounds like the theme to a triumphant ad for Republicanism, where a child whirls in a country church while music floods through the windows like patriotic sunshine. There are some speedy electrics here, but nothing hummable – just occasionally sensual, psychedelic electro-imagination singing a laid-back streak.
(PO Box 12698, Seattle, WA 98111)