-=- SHGZ -=- * Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal * ARTIST..: Joy Zipper ALBUM...: The Heartlight Set GENRE...: Indie STYLE...: Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Dream Pop YEAR....: 2005 LABEL...: Vertigo COUNTRY.: USA PLACE...: New York City, NY ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V0 BITRATE.: 261 kbps avg QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo SOURCE..: CD TRACKS..: 13 SIZE....: 77.52 MB URL..: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartlight_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Zipper https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/joy_zipper/the_heartlight_set - TRACKLIST 1 Go Tell The World 2:03 2 1 2:33 3 Thought's A Waste Of Time 4:02 4 You're So Good 3:43 5 Anything You Sent 2:47 6 No Time Pt.1 0:39 7 For Lenny's Own Pleasure 2:45 8 You Run The Game 3:29 9 Window 3:41 10 2 Dreams I Had 3:23 11 World Doesn't Care 3:49 12 Rockdove 3:29 13 Holy Diver 4:50 Total Playtime: 41:13 The album starts with a little in-studio banter. "Time is money, come on!" This was certainly true of last year's mini-album 'The Stereo & God', but what will become of this new, more considered effort? The opening track is a statement of intent. 'Go Tell The World' is a fitting title for a band who have had to rely so much on word of mouth and celebrity endorsements; indeed, a Mister Gary Lightbody featured them on his mixtape 'The Trip' last year. This record is Joy Zipper reaching out to all the people who haven't heard of them and are yet to bathe in their musical day-glo lights. With such an agenda, they get off to a confusing start. Most songs on the first half fail to breach the 3-minute barrier and so this album can leave you very disorientated at times, with only Tabitha Tindale's lull keeping your feet on the ground. Her nonchalant, bubblegum-chewing attitude coupled with a sickly-sweet, breathy delivery and cutesy lyrics make The Beatles seem like wife-beating bastards in comparison. However, perseverance will serve you well as penultimate track 'Rockdove' is a silk cutting of kooky keyboards and luscious melodies which you could envisage accompanying a 50s American infomercial telling you "How To Get The Best Out Of Your Whites". When Daphne and Celeste released their uninspiring cover of 'School's Out' in late August, they became a record company's liability and promptly disappeared from our radar. Joy Zipper have clearly done their market research. It makes perfect sense to release a collection of songs with such a summery feel just as the temperature starts to crank up a notch. On the whole, this album is jam-packed full of the kind of dreamy pop that really wouldn't sound out of place on a Velvet Underground album or on a patchwork rug, over-looking the setting sun. For a band so established on these shores (this is the third album to have been received with critical acclaim), they enjoy relatively little success in their native USA. But with an album this good, hows about we keep them a secret for a bit longer, eh? * Love or hate US teen drama The OC, it features some pretty decent music and has helped improve the profile of numerous indie acts including Franz Ferdinand and The Killers Stateside, where R&B, hip hop and middle of the road pop often dominate the Billboard 100. New York indie duo Joy Zipper have also experienced the honour of hearing their second album, American Whip, played on the show. The follow-up The Heartlight Set is poppy, melodic but cool enough to make its way into Seth Cohen's record collection too. For indie fans whose taste extends beyond British guitar bands that are played on Radio 1, Joy Zipper probably need no introduction. But for everyone else, they are boyfriend-and-girlfriend twosome Vinny Cafiso and Tabitha Tindale. They sound a lot like many other American indie acts, a little bit Mojave 3, a little bit Breeders perhaps, but have a distinct enough sound to stand out on their own. They are partial to hazy vocals, gentle guitar strumming and navel-gazing lyrics which all contribute to a throroughly delicious jangly guitar pop sound. The album opens with Go Tell the World, one of the rockier tracks on The Heartlight Set, which wouldn't sound out of place on a White Stripes album - heavy drumbeat and guitars overlaid with a simple but strong vocal from Tabitha Tindale. Next track, 1, is poppier and more melodic than its predecessor and helps demonstrate the variety of tone on this album. The range of sounds achieved by Joy Zipper is in part attributed to the fact that the duo alternate vocals, which can radically alter the sound. Tindale's voice possesses shades of Hope Sandoval and Tanya Donelly - sweet without becoming sickening, while Cafiso is the slightly weaker of the two vocally but expresses enough emotion to compensate. The vocal harmonies are also extremely effective. Tindale tends to lend her vocal to the heavier tracks such as the opener and also You're So Good, which is one of the strongest tracks on an album that is consistent throughout. Window is another stand-out song, and once again features Tindale on lead vocal. It's fast-paced, with grumbling guitars, lovely harmonies and angsty lyrics such as "Window, looking out the window, checking on the hour.The grass has grown an inch since you have left. Counting all the times I missed you. You were all I wanted maybe I was blinded by the thought". It demonstrates that while Joy Zipper do the soft, slow ballady type songs beautifully they are more comfortable and distinct making music with a heavier edge. The weakest track on The Heartflight Set is possibly the final tune Holy Diver. It is a bit slow and slightly monotonous, however given the right environment, say lying naked in candlelight, while staring in the eyes of a significant other, it could take on a different meaning. In fact the whole album is designed for life's intimate moments. It is the sort of listening experience that is best shared with an intimate group of close friends over a bottle of wine or spliff or whatever else does it for you, in a darkened room while recalling warm memories. It's unlikely to reach momentous levels of success but when has that really mattered to true music fans. Joy Zipper are not the sort of act who make music to be on the front covers of the tabloids - they do it for love not money. And long may they keep on producing albums like The Heartlight Set. * "Heartlight," whatever that may be, has lent its name to a personal favorite young adult science-fantasy novel by T.A. Barron, a Marion Zimmer Bradley witch-story paperback I came across three minutes ago on Amazon, and of course, the rousing Diamond/Bacharach pop song. It makes sense that Joy Zipper would adopt the phrase, given their obvious debt to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, the phosphorescent pink glow of which come closest to sonically approximating its compelling image. On The Heartlight Set, Long Island duo Vinny Cafiso and Tabitha Tindale continue to let that oneironautic influence shine in a greasy rainbow alongside Stereolab and the omnipresent Pet Sounds. At the outset, Joy Zipper's latest looks to augur a slight shift. First track "Go Tell the World" all but sends up the band's frequent White Stripes comparisons (y'know, 'cause they're a couple) with Tindale's talky, blues-based vocals calling out over a swinging drum beat. Shortly, though, the typical swirly Shields-isms snuff the budding retro-rock in familiar shoegaze-era production values. The Belle & Sebastian pop of "Anything You Sent" is another exception, veering dangerously close at the chorus to the "come on, come on and dance all night" section of Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City". By the record's end, songs like horn-lightened "World Doesn't Care", catchy yet endlessly repetitive "Rockdove", and diaphanous, immersive finale "Holy Driver" return to the band's status quo. In their sonic appropriations, Joy Zipper most resemble Snow Patrol's polished Final Straw. Indeed, first single "You're So Good" has Tindale and Cafiso both sounding notably Lightbody-esque over simple, crunching guitars, and the lyrics share Lightbody's intra-relationship emotional space without his string-yanking specificity. Forthcoming single "1" is a catchy gray spot, laying Cafiso's unspectacular love poetry ("you're the one") atop one of the recycled chord progressions that allowed 90s alt-rock radio to exist. A fizzy guitar lead during instrumental bits jumps straight out of the solo in Weezer's "Across the Sea", but the words are more Green Album. My childhood Heartlight involved vast galactic struggles worthy of L'Engle, if not Lucas or, humph, Dubya. Joy Zipper's meticulous dream-pop is, similarly, in the realm of the tesseract-enabling science fantasy, but its emotional palette ranges mostly between kinda-melancholy ("Thoughts a Waste of Time") and sorta-happy ("What You Want"-esque "Window"). OK, there's also the incongruously tawdry "For Lenny's Own Pleasure" (that's Bruce, natch). No Diamond, though. * The Long Island, New York duo that make up Joy Zipper, Vinny Cafiso and Tabitha Tinsdale, a couple outside of their musical partnership, have received comparisons with Jack and Meg White, the twosome at the centre of Detroit rock group The White Stripes. In reality, however, the mix of warm, fuzzy tones and barbed words at the heart of Joy Zipper's third album 'The Heartlight Set' puts them closer in the pantheon of rock partnerships to Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. 'The Heartlight Set' opens in determined fashion with the handclap percussion, heavy guitars and insistent words of two-minute track 'Go Tell the World'. Forthcoming single '1' is cheerier, with harmonies and a more gentle guitar backing making something similar to what the Dandy Warhols might produce. The lead single off the album, 'You're So Good', is likewise upbeat, talking of love, contentment and long summer nights. The record's highlights, however, and Joy Zipper's strongest suit in general, are the tracks that mix the sunny yellows with darker tones. While Tinsdale and Cafiso take turns on lead vocals, it seems that Cafiso is left to front much of the gloomier stuff. The first of these, 'Thought's A Waste of Time', includes vocal harmonies and upbeat guitar lines but overlays them with lyrics of melancholy and despair. Another highlight is 'You Run the Game', an acoustic-guitar driven, wistful moment of remorse for a relationship developing for the worse that finishes off with a refrain that seems more a note of contented resignation than despair. This seems to be Joy Zipper's style. 'World Doesn't Care' is even moodier, coupling downbeat lyrics with an almost despondent guitar line. 'Anything You Sent' is more Belle and Sebastian, combining happy words with quirky melodies, while 'No Time' is a sparse unaccompanied vocal track. What is probably the best song musically on 'The Heartlight Set' is also its most curious lyrically, the lurid drug trip 'For Lenny's Own Pleasure' that seems to in some way involve US comedian Lenny Bruce. But then, the story of 'The Heartlight Set' is a story of contrast, making it one for those who like music with a quirky combination of brightness and humour with a darker edge. -=- SHGZ -=- -=-=-==-=-=- Shoegaze is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the late 80s. The genre is very difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and textural distortion that create a tranquil, opaque feeling. ---==--==---