It's very rare that any album these days can hold my interest for its entire duration, especially if we are talking about listening on my iPod during commute times which is, sadly, the predominant way I listen to music. Thankfully, I've been captivated for the past month by a record that feels exciting and challenging. Also exciting is the fact that I crave this record - I feel like I have to listen to it, and it's thrilling to know that I can still feel that way about music. 13 Patient Flowers by The Mirrors is a record that - for all intensive purposes - should not make any cohesive sense. The influences and the styles are completely scattered. The record opens with a raucous garage rock number ("The Suburban Strate Coat"), then leads into a simple, yet beautiful pop song ("Patient Flowers"). As it continues for a duration of 45 minutes, there's more rock, alongside acoustic dirges and one avant garde experiment. There's not a narrative that passes through, yet a certain youthful abandon that brilliantly ties the entire album together.The Mirrors were an Texas-based band that featured vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Greg Ashley, who would later move to Oakland, CA, sign to Birdman Records and release two solo records as well as two with his highly successful indie outfit, the Gris Gris. The Mirrors still do play the occasional show - they will be at South by Southwest in March, for instance. Last year, Birdman reissued 13 Patient Flowers on vinyl as a means to excavate "Ashley's earlier works to showcase his talents in their formative stages." (Buy it here).
On their MySpace, the Mirrors' sound is described as, "The Gris Gris if they couldn't play their instruments," and the description is surprisingly adept. There's an un-pretensious excitement and a naivete to their playing style, much like God's Boat by the Passionistas, the record I put out on my own label. The only striking difference between the Mirrors and the Passionistas is that the latter consider themselves highly influenced by pop culture, whereas I would not be surprised if the Mirrors had never even heard of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.
Beneath not being able to "play their instruments," their is genuine, raw talent (brilliance even) in the Mirrors. They might not be writing a song to top the charts, but this band knows pop music (at least pre-1978), and even at its most relentless, a genuinely catchy hook is that far behind. Despite its lo-fi recording aesthetic, you will certainly find yourself toe-tapping and even hand-clapping with an undeniable chorus like, "I don't wanna wanna wanna live all alone/ I don't wanna wanna wanna live all alone." It strikes me as though 13 Patient Flowers must have been recorded over a summer, because the whole thing smells of a group of friends toiling away their summer with booze and weed, breaking only to record another song.
The Mirrors may be learning their instruments and how to use recording equipment for the very first time, but in their possibly misguided, "Hey, let's make a record" mentality, they managed to create a work of pure genius and as perfect a record as anything I've heard in a very long time.
