Aluminum Group Pedals CD

Produced by Chicago avant-rock godfather Jim O'Rourke and featuring guest appearances from the High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan, the Mekons' Sally Timms, and violinist Susan Voelz, among others. The Aluminum Group's third album moves far afield from the neo-Bacharachisms of 1995's WONDER BOY and the Magnetic Fields influences of 1997's PLANO. The Jim Webb-like multi-part nine-minute opening track, "Rrose Selavy's Valise," is the most experimental of the album's 10 songs, yet the lush soft-pop melodies and smooth vocals of brothers Frank and John Navin remain its focal point. While the rest of the album retains the Navins' trademark early '70s soft rock influences, the proceedings are considerably more complex, with unexpected left turns and weird sounds punctuating the arrangements and strange musical fragments popping up between the songs. PEDALS is somewhat more difficult to get a handle on than the band's smoother earlier albums, but it's ultimately much more satisfying.

Recorded at ACME Studios, Chicago, Illinois between April and May 1999.

Personnel: Jim O'Rourke (electric guitar, piano, synthesizer, background vocals); Sean O'Hagan (banjo); Susan Voelz (violin); Shelly Weiss (viola); Alison Chesley (cello); Paul Mertens (flute, saxophone); Rob Mazurek (cornet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Edith Frost, Sally Timms (background vocals).

Photographer: Mark Ward.

Unknown Contributor Roles: Douglas McCombs; Edith Frost; Frank Navin; John Navin; Sally Timms; Sean O'Hagan.

Personnel includes: Frank Navin (vocals, piano, Farfisa organ, keyboards); John Ridenour (acoustic & electric guitars, background vocals); John Navin electric guitar, background vocals); Liz Conant (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, harpsichord, keyboards, Moog synthesizer); Eddie Carlson (upright & electric basses); John Blaha (acoustic & electronic drums).

3rd Rel

Rolling Stone (9/30/99, p.88) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...top-drawer American art-pop....[undercuts] proper pop-song construction with pauses, dissolves and arresting harmonic bridges....the Aluminum Group wins its point: Pretty pictures will never look quite the same again."
Spin (12/99, pp.228,230) - 8 out of 10 - "...dauntingly smart...but also sincerely schmaltzy....a record about what happens when your head and your heart grow so big they start fighting each other for space
Alternative Press (12/99, p.83) - 3 out of 5 - "...creating a lush, full sound that's high on melodic invention yet filled with fashionable nods to the past....PEDALS plays as if it were originally 30 or 40 different tunes that have been cut-and-pasted together to make 10 harmonically adventurous and extremely dense tracks..."
The Wire (10/99, p.59) - "...This largely acoustic, lush, melodic music has its attractions..."