As do many practitioners of dark American pop, Warn Defever plays obsessive games with the possibilities of the baroque, but cannot stay for the outcome. His Name Is Alive’s 1993 Mouth By Mouth established Defever as some kind of auteur: Karin Oliver sang Defever’s childlike melodies in a slightly disaffected deadpan that nevertheless contained a residue of folkie warmth, and the music was overheated almost to the point of aridity.
The centerpiece of Mouth By Mouth was a cover of Big Star’s “Blue Moon” that suggested sinking underwater by artificial moonlight. Detrola comes across as more overtly pop, like Brian Wilson or Todd Rundgren or Prince. The folkish melodies are still there (sung by the very capable Andrea FM, Lovetta Pippen and Erika Hoffmann), along with minimalist funk riffs (as on “Seven Minutes”, which recalls both Prince and the Soft Pink Truth).
Compared to its sources, Detrola betrays a certain impatience. The ideas don’t seem developed; they simply appear, have their three or four minutes, and make way for something else. Sometimes this approach is effective, as on the lovely “Your Bones”, which features a middle section straight out of Wild Honey, or “I Thought I Saw”, where living-room-upright piano chords evoke the post-Brill Building pop of Rundgren or Nino Tempo and April Stevens.
Still, Detrola is fascinatingly incomplete; it slides past without ever quite opening up, like a troubled friend who has abandoned conversation and can communicate only by musing over an out-of-tune piano in a darkened room.