Throw Me the Statue

Creaturesque (Secretly Canadian)

By Lou Battaglia
Published: August 26th, 2009 | 12:14am

It was a tragedy that Throw Me the Statue’s debut album, Moonbeams, received as little notice as it did. With Moonbeams (Baskerville Hill), Scott Reitherman, the creative personality behind TMTS, put forth a vibrant, indie pop album that effectively masked the fact it was mostly a one-man bedroom project. With follow-up EP, Purpleface (Secretly Canadian), Reitherman, with the aid of a few friends, seemed to be building TMTS into a formidable musical project.

Enter Phil Ek, producer for the Shins, Built To Spill, and Band Of Horses. It is not uncommon for a promising, up-and-coming group to collaborate with an established producer in an attempt to take their sound to the next level (e.g., My Morning Jacket and John Leckie or the Red Hot Chili Peppers and George Clinton). Generally, the collaboration works best when the producer stays out of the way and helps bring to the surface whatever gives the band its promise. Unfortunately, Ek does not achieve this with TMTS.

Creaturesque sounds, at times, like Ek smothering TMTS with textures which reek of the Pacific Northwest sound that the band bore no traces of before, despite being from Seattle. What was on Moonbeams and Purpleface — an accessible yet eclectic and interesting brand of indie pop — is now on Creaturesque a muddled mixture of Death Cab For Cutie lyricism and Shins-like arrangements. Despite the carryover of particular sonic elementsfrom Moonbeams to Creaturesque such as the lo-fi drum machine intros on “Lolita” and “Cannibal Rays,” there is an inherently different sound.

On Creaturesque, Reitherman also seems more focused on words, as if the songs are merely a vehicle by which to deliver his lyrics. This leads to mixed results; take for instance “Pistols,” which, besides some of the lyrics, is one of the album’s highlights. Reitherman sings “Love stinks / Finance the issue / You be the banks and I’ll be the missiles.” This seems to be Reitherman trying (unsuccessfully) to combine a diary confession with abstract imagery.

While the collaboration between Ek and TMTS was a mistake, the results weren’t all bad, with good tracks thrown in like “Tag” and “Ancestors.” In the end, this is nothing more than a case of a sophomore slump.

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