Karl Blau

Karl Blau is one of those people who has so many musical ideas and skills that a single project isn’t enough to contain him. That helps to explain why he has appeared on albums by the Microphones and Little Wings and also records with D+ in addition to his own solo albums. Clothes-Yr-I’s is his third solo offering (which originally came out in 2001), and it has such a lo-fi, ramshackle feel that sometimes it’s like Blau has just recorded his rehearsals rather than actual songs. Still, that has worked out well enough for Phil Elvrum (of the Microphones), so there’s no real reason to worry there. Yet when he does remain focused and follow a more conventional song structure (such as the opening "Pendulum” or the piano-driven "Fasten Me To You”), Blau is perfectly capable of producing some wonderfully evocative music. Those coherent moments only serve to make the other tracks more frustrating, but even his stranger moments are still intriguing at least, and that makes Clothes-Yr-I’s one of the more interesting recent albums.