Pattern Is Movement
(Hometapes) www.home-tapes.com
Inspired by a box of sepia-toned photos, All Together puts a post-modern complexity into baroque fantasies of voice and orchestral instruments. Listening, you’d hardly believe that Pattern Is Movement has only two core members, Andrew Thiboldeaux and Chris Ward, as they hazard giddy excursions into all kinds of music – from quasi-classical, to cool jazz, to fractious post-pop. The most accessible cuts – “Jenny Ono,” for instance – lilt like prism-refracted barbershop quartets. Others, the abruptly shifting “Peach Trees” or the piano-spiked, thudding “Elephant,” feel like pop songs that have slipped their rhythmic tethers. These compositions have, nonetheless, a core of melancholic nostalgia, as images like baby’s feet and trolleys float by on clouds of harmony. “I miss my childhood friend,” Thiboldeaux confides in not one but two songs. That’s odd, because Ward, a pal since their early days in a Christian hip hop outfit, is standing right across the mic stand.
Standout Tracks: “Jenny Ono,” “Elephant” JENNIFER KELLY











