Resin

New Times Los Angeles
08/03/2000
Music | Revolver

The Sugarplastic
Resin
Escape Artist Recordings
By Jim Freek

Quite possibly the last remaining gasp of hope for any kind of scene in Silver Lake, the Sugarplastic have outlasted that locale's once-hyped brightest hopes -- Lutefisk, Velouria, Possum Dixon -- even if that means they had to self-release their new album and don't plan on performing any of its songs live. After watching their hopeful 1996 Geffen offering -- the magnificent Bang, the Earth Is Round -- die a horrible major-label death, the band seemed to take a creative nap, going on sort of a semihiatus and playing live on only a handful of occasions during the past few years.

Well, wake up and smell the Resin, because it was well worth the wait.

Having outgrown the tedious XTC comparisons that followed them around on their first two albums, the Sugarplastic prove here that vocalist/guitarist Ben Eshbach did more during the band's four-year layoff than sit in coffeehouses twiddling his thumbs. Instead, he's emerged as one of the most clever songwriters around. The band's third album, Resin is the Sugarplastic's most experimental and out-there effort to date.

The opening blast of postpunk guitar rock on the all-too-brief (1:12) "Big World" gets the "loud rock" out of the way rather quickly, but things don't necessarily get quiet after that. On tracks like "Funny Cigarettes" and "Ben Takes a Walk to Lose Company and on the Way He Sees Some Ice Skaters," the music floats from atmospheric to animated, childlike soundscapes, particularly in the latter song, with its spooky Nightmare Before Christmas strings and bells. But the Sugarplastic are and will always be about pop, and things become truly magical when Eshbach delves deep into his passion for '60s psychedelia and left-of-center songwriting (Brian Eno and the Residents both seem to be a current obsession). "Little Ash Statue" is awash in both, with stomping barrelhouse piano and swelling Abbey Road harmonies. More nods to the Fab Four abound on "Talk Back," with a weeping, George Harrison-like slide guitar, and the whimsical chorus of "Oh Leo" sounds as if it could have been lifted from McCartney's Ram album. "Folk" and "Odium" show Eschbach to be a tunesmith of skewed perfect pop of the highest caliber, and the lovely "Dunn the Worm" is a sublime bit of perfectionism that sits as possibly one of the finest moments in their oeuvre. Bassist Kiara Geller, whose fluid playing is just as much a part of the Sugarplastic's appeal, even gets off a few of his own with the strangely wonderful, backward-tracked "Rosy Malarkey" and the charming, acoustic "Novelty Man."

Finally, an album by a Los Angeles pop band that isn't embarrassing. And if that's not enough, they've already got a whole other one in the can.

Go back to Spastic-Laughter Press Clippings.