
#10
Holiday Shores: “We Couldn’t Be Together”
[from New Masses For Squaw Peak / Two Syllable]
Though the rest of New Masses For Squaw Peak betrays this theory a good deal of the time, I’m fully convinced that Holiday Shores are ardent disciples of the Brian Wilson approach to writing a song and then tearing it down to nothing, putting it back together by cramming it with as much instrumentation as possible and then pulling out random bits and pieces of about ninety percent of that instrumentation. The end result sounds is a mixture of sounds that fit perfectly together and form a fully cohesive effort, but have none of the trappings that leave a good deal of music sounding tired and rehearsed.
“We Couldn’t Be Together” is one of these Picasso-like assembled songs that works at every moment in it’s short two and a half minutes. Piano chords chime in randomly, the keyboard wanders all over the place, the organ gives off an eerie “end of the circus” vibe and the attack of the bass rises and falls with reckless abandon. It’s a total mess and it all works exactly as it should. Every song should be deconstructed like this.