Record Exchange Boise

Reviews:

Timony's second album (previous was 2000's Mountains, although both Helium records seemed more Timony's vision than that of her partner at the time, former Polvo guitarist Ash Bowie) was produced by Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, who contributes synths and infuses the music with a spacey-aqueous, otherworldly ambiance. Right from the outset the Oriental-sounding guitar notes and swooping cellos of "Look a Ghost in the Eye" incline things towards weightless reverie, no chemical additives necessary, with Timony's breathy voice skipping across the melody like a smooth stone across a glassy pond. First single "Dr. Cat" also has a baroque lightness-of-being quality, its sing-songy, nursery-tale vocal slowly dissolving into a thick mist of strings and keyboards. And "Musik and Charming Melodee" is as hypnotically compelling in its handclap-driven, neo-motorik Krautrock beat and massed-keys wall-of-Eno sonics as its title is quirkily descriptive.

Not counting a hidden track, the album concludes on its most overtly prog-rock note, the moody, gray-skies fusion instrumental "Ash and Alice." (Wonder who that is about.) But by that point Timony's remarkably agile paws have already smeared globs of Day-Glo psychedelia, neon-lit electropop and earth-toned folk rock upon her canvas. Calling The Golden Dove one of the year's most colorful, broad-spectrum releases to date wouldn't be too far off.