THEY COME IN THREES
Blindsided, Part 1 (Fall Of Rome)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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Quirky pop that restores honor to the term "quirky." They Come In Threes are a Detroit band with incredible pop sensibilities that are most definitely retro, and yet I can't give you a single example of a band they sound like. Their song structures cannot be predicted and even if you had a schematic you probably couldn't follow exactly until you'd made the trip a few times. In fact, if you wrote the music down on paper and presented it to a music scholar, he would say "ah, fusion?" No, no! The magic pop ingredient is intangible, though the three-part harmonies are a dead giveaway at times. Another thing that makes this band unique in this time zone is that they build most of their songs on top of the unmistakably identifiable sounds of vintage synthesizers, answering the question "what if Jean Michel Jarre had joined a pop band?" If the songs aren't necessarily memorable it's only because there's far too much in each one to commit to memory. The album was recorded in 2000 for Spectator Records, which then promptly folded and left this gem gathering dust. Mark Rome caught wind of it and released it on his Fall Of Rome records, the third such rescue he's performed this year. Big round of applause for this guy. Because of him there will be fewer tragic tales of fantastic albums never seeing the light of day. As I sit listening to the sonic carnival that is "Electric Eel," I get a momentary shudder thinking this might have been another of those tales.

© 2002 - DJ Johnson