Rhythm & Views

Colourmusic

It's not often that a new band comes along with the ability to momentarily disarm a music snob's knee-jerk habit to reduce an act into a one-sentence hack review. Colourmusic, of Clearwater, Okla (yes, Clearwater!), is such a band.

Colourmusic's full-length debut, f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13--the tracks of which were based on Isaac Newton's theory on color and sound--combines new material with the act's first two EPs, Red and Yellow. The psych-pop foursome (down from a five-piece "for the audience's safety") can be compared to fellow Okies (and former tourmates) The Flaming Lips, while flashes of '60s influences pop up between crushing walls of guitar distortion, not unlike '80s trio Love and Rockets.

Le Bon's theory of crowd psychology could be applied to f, monday's "Yes!" and "Put in a Little Gas," with their building chants and hypnotic grooves inspiring uncontrollable cubicle moshing. "Circles" loops repetitive acoustic hooks and bells like a never-ending snooze alarm--or M.C. Escher's "Drawing Hands." "Winter Song" and "Moolah" are simple, breezy love songs, but sung with unsettling falsettos and faux-British accents that can't quite be trusted.

If f, monday were a movie, it'd be a subversive Stanley Kubrick remake of the hippy musical Hair, staring Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. How's that for a knee-jerk hack review?