Novak
Novak
Kitty Kitty Corp. (UK) / Hidden Agenda (US)

In the hands of almost every other musician, the accordion is an instrument relegated to polka and gimmickery. In the hands of Novak's Tasmin Snell, it — with some help from an oscillator, a toy xylophone and a furiously-bowed guitar — turns a shy-girl indie rock number into a soaring work of beauty. A seven-minute symphony that leaves its listeners with chills running up and down their spines long after the song has ended.

That's Novak, in a nutshell. Named for actress Kim, the Birmingham septet is all over the map. From the hip-hop drumbeats-with-wah-wah-ed guitar of "Blue Chinook" to the oscillator-flute-and-distorted-vocals-driven "Boy Scouts of America," Novak hits all the right notes without hitting the same one twice.

The album gets rolling with the superb accordion-based "Lord of the World," which itself begins fairly innocuously. By the end of it, however, you can't help but be drawn into the warm oscillator bursts, frenetic guitar, backwards-looped xylophone and Eastern-European-sounding accordion. It's for moments like the end of "Lord of the World" that the term "climax" was invented.

It's after "Lord of the World" that Novak runs into a small problem. There's a four-song gap between "Lord of the World" and the other masterpiece on the album, "Boy Scouts of America." Thus, at this point, it's tempting to just skip "Fruit Cooler," "Burning Hoof," "Cross Purposes" and "Blue Chinook." Those who stay, however, will be rewarded.

The appeal of these middle tracks isn't as apparent as "Lord of the World," "Boy Scouts of America" or previous a-sides "Telesphore," "Rapunzel" and "Silver Seas." Nonetheless, they're all worth hearing.

"Fruit Cooler" is the most lyrical Novak song to date, though what exactly Adele Williams is singing is anyone's guess. Lovely chorus, though. "Burning Hoof" opens with an over-miked, galloping-horse drumbeat. When the distortion fades, flute, distorted guitar and Adele's breathy vocals take turns wresting control of the piece from the drums before surrendering at the end. "Cross Purposes" has a weaker opening than any other track on the album, though it leads into the dreamy "Blue Chinook" nicely.

"Boy Scouts of America" reminds us all what fools '60s and '70s acts like Canned Heat and Jethro Tull were when they tried to incorporate the flute into their hippy-rock shticks. Rather than combine the soft-spoken instrument with lilting, off-kilter vocals a la Canned Heat or fey dirty hippy "poetry" like Jethro Tull, Novak merely mic the flute a bit louder and mix it with distorted, incomprehensible vocals, toy piano oscillator and guitar (also distorted.) The effect is a triumph. Who but a flautist knew that instrument could be so commanding? "Boy Scouts" is followed by a more-freaked-out version of "Peggy's Well" than that featured on the Will Our Children Thank Us compilation released earlier this year. The frantic-yet-minimalist "Havana (Where She Was)," another strong piece, rounds out the album.

Sure, the band left some of its best songs off of this album, but what we did get is still enough to get this album plenty of airplay on the stereos of the few lucky enough to hear this. And kudos to Hidden Agenda for giving this album a U.S. release date only one week after its U.K. release. This doesn't happen nearly enough.

And if you want to listen before you buy, feel free to check out one of the unofficial sites dedicated to the band. Here you can listen to four tracks recorded for the BBC's John Peel Show, though don't let the low-fi Real Audio tracks create any fear in your heart about the quality of recording on the album.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)