| Millbrook's Cathedrals is an explosive, assured, tremendously enjoyable work. Hall-of-Fame worthy, too. |
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Millbrook
Cathedrals
(2005)
Pop, when it’s good, is as good as it gets, and pop of the go-for-broke variety, the fearless kind of pop that only the best-suited can pull off, is as good as it gets or better. Actually, it’s best and it’s the cat’s pajamas.
The team of Daniel Jacob Horine and Steven Moser, who record under the somewhat mysterious name of Millbrook, are the “It” boys of the moment. They’re the ones currently wearing the cat’s pajamas, and for all I care they can record in them. For all I know, they did.
Cathedrals, the third in a series of EPs, dubbed epistle 3, is an explosive, assured, tremendously enjoyable work comprising five melodic masterpieces that blow everything else out of the water, and that includes any record you might currently be listening to, and your kitchen appliances, too. The thing works best played straight through, but there is no shame in digging it one song at a time.
Fully orchestrated, with real strings (augmented by the warm sounds of a mellotron) and horns, real drums and really fine melodies, Cathedrals pleases at every turn. The songs, written by Horine and Moser, mesh this and that melodic pop style and come up roses with wholly original songs, freshly realized and delivered. “Meet Me in the Fields” encapsulates what Millbrook brings to the pop table; the song might as well be the duo’s business card.
Might you be driven to hire these guys to provide the soundtrack to your life? Oh, yes, especially when so much is infused into the music with such obvious attention to craft and detail. And moments, oh so many delectable, memorable moments: the way the French horns bellow in the wordless middle-eight, and the absolutely breathtaking, dramatic downward spiral the strings take before the last chorus, in “Meet Me in the Fields”; the spirited nod to John Lennon’s vocal style in the Beatlesque “Crude Model of You”; the lively, absolutely right-on bossa-nova mood of “Whitegirl,” buoyed by some terrific flute playing by David Lamoreaux and Stephan Cardenas; the Roy Wood-by-way-of-Van Dyke Parks approach to the Sixties-meets-00s, poppy, rhythm-blown “Mr. Golightly”; and the tender, floating, vibrating strings of the Far Eastern pastiche, “Geisha Doll,” which recalls Harpers Bizarre’s take on Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Me, Japanese Boy.”
Not ones to cheap out their sound, Horine, Moser and their cast of musical visionaries—great players, all—play every note for real, as if the pool has dried up. It’s this incredible commitment that immediately elevates Millbrook to the top of the poppermost. Hat’s off, then, to this incredible, Hall-of-Fame-worthy EP, and here’s to more, and soon.
Alan Haber
October 27, 2005
Go to: Millbrook