Circulus - Clocks Are Like People (Rise Above)
2/5
By: Michael Lewin
Rockfeedback wants to be a bit angsty. He just does not want to engage with Circulus' wacked out minstrel chic. It annoys him deeply, it crawls all sharp and piercing beneath his nails of tolerance and refuses to be dislodged.
And he knows that just isn't fair. Circulus radiate a certain bonhomie that should under other circumstances be entirely agreeable.
It's not as though he's a particularly unforgiving chap. Nor is it a case of being jealous of their liberal attitude and security in dressing all period (indeed, Rockfeedback himself is dressed as he writes in the garb of a 1890s Bulgarian émigré).
No. It's the self-righteousness.
However, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Circulus are seven in number, Medieval in garb and make music. 'Clocks are like People' is their second album, an album pompous bucolic prog, the wistfulness of the Lady of Shalot backed by surprisingly well-integrated 70s Moog squiggles, with Disney's 'Robin Hood' theme tune wind instruments.
The medieval thing is relentless: dragons, minstrels, travellers, a half-cocked pseudo-Hellenic pagan romanticism drips from every pastoral reference - "remember the showers bring up the flowers" being a choice example. Circulus' medieval seems a fantastical one, routed in a kleptomaniac approach to myth, legend and history.
Songs meander whimsically. In fact, whimsy is the general tone, exemplified by the Moogs. Only the whimsical play prog and use moogs and dress up.
Which is fine. All of it, fine. 'Clocks Are Like People' can at times be soothing, and often feels as cheek-tongued as that old BBC Childrens' Maid Marian.
Why the bile, then? It's harmless fun, surely?
But it's not fine. It's NOT! Because they're just so damn "oo aren't we just sooo quirky and fun and liberated and don't you just wish you were as liberated as us and will you please pay us some attention because we're so quirky and you obviously can't handle it because you're so boring and don't dress like a minstrel and..."
ARGH! Self-F**KING-righteous, but worse - self-righteously merry, self-righteously amicable like the happy and militantly religious, the logic of the teen goth with the emotions inverted. It is deeply objectionable, disagreeable and irritating; and which, admittedly, is so much vile personal slander on Rockfeedback's behalf.
Or, at least, it would be, were it not for the fact all these qualities are present in Circulus' music: the giddy anachronisms, the light-hearted conceit, the songs about dragons, the whimsy, the goddamn MOOGS!
'Clocks Are Like People' is almost laudable, an unusual album which is certainly refreshing in it's positive naievety and unarguably original imagination, much as Circulus are a conceit taken successfully to its conclusion. But it is just so annoying, and do you know what's worse? They know it and take delight in that, too.
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