Anton Barbeau - The Automatic Door
On the whole this album is awash with the kind of charm present in a favourite grandfather telling a well-rehearsed joke.
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In the second track of the latest in a long succession of albums, Anton Barbeau sings "you can love the lemon skin but loathe the rind". That's a good way to describe how to feel about his twelve song album, 'The Automatic Door'. It has a quaint, likable, feel-good vibe that permeates through solid arrangements of reliably decent, though predictable, songwriting. Barbeau has a knack for blending the old (guitar, harmonica, wurlitzer, accordion) with the new (synthesizers, drones, vocal effects, drum loops) to somewhat quirky, somewhat serious ends. You'd have a hard time calling this album grand, but majesty isn't everything - there are plenty of other qualities to find worthwhile. Besides, if the man can mention big business, bombings, natural disasters, dolphins, war, hippies and terrorism in a single song then you know you have something, um, special.
If you took Apples In Stereo, took away all their cool, all that Elephant Six Collective cred and lastly their hip appeal, then what you're left with is Anton Barbeau. He doesn't care he isn't cool; he rolls around in his awkward love of the Sixties, throwing silly soft-psychedelic songs and lyrics at us as if he'd found a way of ignoring the last four decades (though I think he mentions Devendra Banhart in 'Who's the Pony Now?'). It's slightly mad, yes, but forgivable because the ditties contained on 'The Automatic Door' are charming in their whimsical rewriting of history. It's like that Philip K. Dick novel, 'The Man in the High Castle', where the Axis powers win WWII, except, in Barbeau's reality, we are in the year 1969, where hippies and happy-folk rule with the world with a limp grip. Best example: there's a song where he actually laughs while singing. Oh, and there's a song called 'As Cool as Folk'.
Admittedly, there are some good utilisations of newer technologies, such as the Nintendo-inspired bleeps of 'Ring Never Bell' and the pleasant sound selection for his keyboard in 'Aw Gee Can't You See?'. On the whole this album is awash with the kind of charm present in a favourite grandfather telling a well-rehearsed joke – he has the whole room's attention but nobody can quite say why.
Perhaps if Barbeau attempted the feat of not making five albums in two years and instead concentrated that wacky energy into a single qualitative effort he'd have something we could call genius.
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