Search - Swimming Pool Q's :: Royal Academy of Reality

Just "Royal"

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 11/18/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Swimming Pool Qs radically change their sound in "Royal Academy of Reality," moving away from a sort of Southern new-wave sound into a... well, they sound like the long-lost Southern cousin of the Elephant 6 Collective. Part spacey, part psychedelic, part southern rock.



It opens with a too-soft-to-really-hear Mini Moog opener, which slides into the sunny pop of "Light Arriving Soon." With several songs like "Yesterday's Rain" and "The Radio in Memphis," the Swimming Pool Qs cling to their Southern pop-rock roots. These songs are a lot grittier, and there are several in the middle of the album, before switching to something a bit odder.



After the brassy cacophony of "Out Of Nothing," the Swimming Pool Qs display their willingness to explore every other kind of music. They take on the watery "The Earth Makes Us Feel Things," ethereal instrumental numbers, funky dancepop about pharaohs and "yin... yang!", stately organs, and languid bassy trip-hop sweeps. In short, a third is Southern-tinged rock, and the other two-thirds are anything else.



It feels like the Swimming Pool Qs are transitioning from one style to another -- and unlike most transition albums, it doesn't feel weird. Instead, it feels like the band is strapping itself onto the "Pharaoh's Rocket," and are heading off to more surreal, spacey places to inspire their music. But, I might add, without leaving their old inspirations behind.



Regal spacepop doesn't seem to meld easily with Southern rock, but it does. More grounded instruments like drums, guitar and bass are paired with cowbells, dulcimer and sax; at the same time, the band weaves in moog, violins, toy piano, turntables and shimmering Mellotron. The result can be funky pop, gritty rock, or sweeping, ethereal soundscapes that tremble under Calder's vocals.



Jeff Calder has an unusually good voice for this kind of music. It's full and flexible; he can sound sexy and languid one moment, and channel Wayne Coyne in "Electron Gardens" the next. The songwriting seems to be a bit out there as well, with songs about a pharaoh in orbit, loneliness in the Deep South, Alpha Centauri and ivy-covered fortunetellers. "Now we're caught in a trance/of high romance and the voltage of plants/will the things that we're seeing/bring us any closer to some new way of being?" Calder asks quizzically.



Take a healthy dose of Southern rock and mingle it with some of the better Flaming Lips songs, and the result is Swimming Pool Qs' "Royal Academy of Reality," a memorable and very promising album."

Music of the Spheres from the Swimming Pool Q's

melkerseyiii | Denver, CODunedin New Zealand | 07/24/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ten years of magic in the making, the "Royal Academy of Reality" is well worth the wait. It is both hauntingly familiar (sometimes like echoes from "Celestion", "Some New Highway" or "The Common Years", to name a few) and yet remarkably different from anything the Pool Q's have released before. There are lush layers of vintage keyboards, celestial voices and visionary soundscapes in these twenty (yes twenty) new songs. Jeff Calder has shifted his vocal and lyrical horizons, propelled by the elemental powers of the Q's. Combine this excitement with spellbinding production and engineering, and you have an artistic achievement that few can match. Without using the term lightly, this recording is a masterpiece. Own it."

Masterpiece

melkerseyiii | 06/19/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As rock critics all over the country are gradually discovering, this is the best rock and roll album of the past forty years. Maturity has seeped into Jeff Calder's brilliant lyrics as well as into the astonishing arrangements flawlessly played by the band. Moogs, gongs, Eastern stringed instruments - all fall naturally into place. The group has never sounded better. They offer us this great work like tablets, like Manna - Moses descending from the parapet."