Dengue fever is embarking on a new chapter in their unique career with their fourth album Cannibal Courtship. There’s distinctly less emphasis on the vintage Cambodian pop and ’60s psych rock influences because the Los Angeles-based septet is incorporating so many other sounds into their style.
Cannibal Courtship Photo: Amazon.com
Funk and jazz are the most noticeable additions, but surf rock, ’60s psych pop, and soul also appear as distinct elements on the album. It’s not that they’ve never touched on these things before, but they are messing noticeably with their formula. They are experimenting so much that each song makes its own individual statement. Some of them are downright odd, but thankfully none are dull.
Guitarist Zac Holtzman also sings more often and more prominently on this new album. This is very brave of him because it would be hard for anyone to sound good next to Cambodian-born singer Chhom Nimol, who is the the band’s main vocalist and arguably its main attraction. Holtzman sometimes sings in an unvarnished alt-rock manner that can clash with Nimol’s highly stylized vocals. However, when he adopts a more mannered style of his own, as he does on psych-pop tracks like “Only a Friend” or “2012 (Bury Our Heads)” their duets are great.
And yet the high points of the album are still the extended tracks like “UKU,” where Nimol sings solo in Khmer. That’s Dengue Fever’s home base and they are doing that better than ever, no doubt because of the freedom they gave themselves to experiment this time around. The Khmer-sung ballad “Sister in the Radio” is the album’s absolute peak.
If Dengue Fever never tried to expound on their initial psychedelia-meets-vintage-Khmer-pop idea there would be nowhere fresh for them to take it after awhile and the act would degenerate into kitsch — the prodigious talents of all concerned notwithstanding. There might be a few too many ideas on this album, which leaves it feeling a bit open-ended, but this is a good thing. As the last notes of “Durian Dowry’s” Cambodian surf die away you are already wondering what the next Dengue Fever album could possibly sound like. (http://blog.mtviggy.com/2011/03/28/album-review-dengue-fever-sounds-new-on-cannibal-courtship/)
01 - Cannibal Courtship
02 - Cement Slippers
03 - Uku
04 - Family Business
05 - Only A Friend
06 - Sister In The Radio
07 - 2012 (Bury Our Heads)
08 - Kiss Of The Bufo Alvarius
09 - Thank You Goodbye
10 - Mr. Bubbles
11 - Durian Dowry
