Review: Flare Acoustic Arts League

Flare Acoustic Arts League - Big Top / Encore (Affairs Of The Heart)
I'll get straight to the point here. LD Beghtol, the chap behind this moniker (and half a dozen others) can be linked to Magnetic Fields. That's it. I could finish now, and you’d know where these songs are coming from, and so be able to draw your own conclusions as to what to expect, and you’d be correct: melodic indie pop for the aficionado. By that I mean those of us who enjoy going deeper than the surface shine and hearing what lies beneath, the slightly more odd and less accessible - mutant pop, if you will.

Flare Acoustic Arts League have packaged up ten alternative pop songs for us here, ranging from instant gems ("Last Clown Standing"), neat boy/girl duets ("Does This Sounds Appealing" - Dana Kletter providing the girl vocals so well), and multifaceted numbers like "Bruises/Candyman Pariah". These songs also come in a range of tempos and sizes, from the short and snappy (despite the title) "Hideous Ethnic Stereotype", to the much slower, more involving "Geography Cure", which could have been recorded by Talk Talk in the early ‘90s. Of course, having gone below the pop fluff to take this musical journey, you have to expect something with a bit more, shall we say, soul?

Engaging from start to finish, with a noir finale (the above mentioned "Geography..."), so not for anyone who prefers the superficial, immediate pop sounds of today, unless they’ve tired of the quick fix, and would like something that resonates after hearing it, rather than just echoing a simple chorus.
www.affairsoftheheart.de
Kev A.