{"id":42185,"date":"2010-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/play-for-affection\/"},"modified":"2010-11-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-26T00:00:00","slug":"play-for-affection","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/play-for-affection\/","title":{"rendered":"Play For Affection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only two tracks in and I\u2019m already thinking hard; that\u2019s what Mark Doyon\u2019s music does to me.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Doyon, who plies his trade of lush, layered, ultra-literate and idiosyncratic postmodern pop under the nom de musique Arms Of Kismet, challenges your senses and expectations at every turn.\u00a0 This is not the stuff that you casually put on in the background to create the low-resonating chatter that makes you forget you\u2019re alone.\u00a0 This is music you fall into the same way you fall into a good painting or poem, a total package of concept, sound and execution\u2014except, quirky.\u00a0 Very quirky.<\/p>\n

Yes, kickoff cut \u201cThe Game\u201d might feel relatively mainstream for a few seconds, with its repeating melody line and rather World Party-esque density.\u00a0 It has a nice bounce to its loose, carnival feel — and then barely a minute in, a banjo rides in out of left field and asserts itself underneath and all around the organ-guitar-drums engine of the track, and you realize Doyon has turned a simple 2:41 pop song into a game of three-dimensional chess.\u00a0 \u201cMy Mercurial Nature\u201d similarly begins in a comfortable pop groove, at least until the sitar kicks in, and then halfway through the entire musical balloon expands at once\u2014drums, organ, guitar, sitar and vocals\u2014and it becomes almost an anthem, illustrating the title in concrete musical terms.\u00a0 As for the trademark AoK off-center wisdom: \u201cA ripe Neanderthal \/ An evolving creature \/ I grow a little every day \/ It\u2019s my mercurial nature\u201d\u2014what husband has never felt like that?<\/p>\n

Single \u201cEmmet Kelly In Love\u201d (watch the video here<\/a>) has so many different things going on in its simultaneously airy and jam-packed three and a half minutes that it\u2019s almost hard to take it all in, and really, what that makes you want to do more than anything when you\u2019re done is simply to listen to it again (hear that, radio people?).\u00a0\u00a0 The frenetic-yet-cerebral \u201cYear Of Reckoning\u201d features a late-song breakdown-and-full-stop that puts the exclamation point on an appealing melody.\u00a0 And the cosmic-philosophizing \u201cWaiting For The Bounce\u201d won me over with a single characterization: \u201cCurled up like a hanging slider \/ Landing in some catcher\u2019s mitt.\u201d\u00a0 (So I\u2019m a sucker for baseball similies…)<\/p>\n

And then, things take a turn for the dark. \u00a0\u201cThe Miserablist\u201d presents a state of sourness toward life as a vocation of its own, an act of will requiring intensity and focus.\u00a0 \u201cHe smokes a lot but doesn\u2019t speak \/ He reads a book by Cheever\u2026\u00a0 And where he goes at night \/ we can only wonder \u2013 wonder \u2013 wonder –\u201d\u00a0 Strange and sad and surprisingly poignant, \u201cThe Miserablist\u201d sets the table nicely for the bizarre curveball that is \u201cLeaving,\u201d a track that feels like a waking dream.\u00a0 At first it\u2019s a spoken-word bit about getting paid after a gig, but then it takes a turn so gritty and Kafkaesque that Doyon even throws in a direct reference to Metamorphosis<\/i>. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m leaving immediately,\u201d declares the alarmed narrator.\u00a0 \u201cThese are things I do not wish to see.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cAnother Song Called Home\u201d brings us back to the plane of reality we\u2019re used to with a slightly country-tinged story-song, albeit with a dark O. Henry ending.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s the decidedly proggy \u201cPersistence Of Mercury,\u201d mostly instrumental and full of exotic intrigue as a guitar-sitar duet gradually adds a little of this and a little more of that until you\u2019re rotating in a sky-hugging swirl of sound.\u00a0 (Trust me, it\u2019s sweet.)\u00a0 The disc closes out in fine style with the suitably elegiac \u201cBeautiful In Plaid,\u201d a chiming, wistful number about being true to yourself in a world that will never quite understand.<\/p>\n

Play For Affection<\/i> is as apt as a title could be; this album is both playful and mutli-layered, its winks and nudges keeping you open and ready to absorb its sadder, stranger and deeper moments. \u00a0It\u2019s also Arms of Kismet\u2019s finest moment on record so far.\u00a0 AoK delivers music that doesn\u2019t so much make you want to tap your feet or dance or sing along\u2014although there are chances along the way to do each of those things\u2014as it makes you think.\u00a0 Mostly, things like \u201cAre beauty and sadness really two sides of the same coin?\u201d and \u201cI\u2019d really like to buy Mark Doyon a beer some time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6966],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-42185","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-arms-of-kismet","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53522,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42185\/revisions\/53522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42185"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42185"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}