The Laughing Have A Fever

Austin art poppers, The Laughing are a difficult bunch to nail down. This is a group that's as messy as their album cover and have the music to prove it. Not that being messy is anything bad, but in listening to The Laughing's Fever the band sound so disorganized and chaotic that it's amazing they're even able to stay together. That apparent lack of control ends up working in their favor as The Laughing end up with a brand of psychedelic pop that knows no boundaries and is unafraid to try just about anything.

With a musical approach that's something like string theory, The Laughing seem to take music and throw it up against the walll and then record whatever sticks. Somehow, some way it works out for them and as it happens Fever ends up sounding like something The Coral might have recorded five or six years ago. Arty, strange, and anything but accessible, Fever has so much going on that it should come with a supplemental guide to explain each track. With dulcimers, ukuleles, clarinets, flutes, and a variety of percussion in tow, the band clearly love writing music from deep in left-field. That's ok, because the results are pretty darn good; see, "Runner," as a fine example of their chaos theory meets melody approach.

After listening to, "Runner," it's pretty obvious, The Laughing are clearly onto something here because their sound is so unique and so strange that no other band could hope to replicate. Commercial music this is not but given half the chance Fever might just reel you in. I mean how could you not like a band that finds a melody with 30 instruments headed in 30 different directions all at once? Easily one of the more original bands around today, these guys really seem like the belong with many of the Deltasonic bands that The Coral helped make famous. Psychedelic, technical, and far out of the mainstream The Laughing are a fascinating band that are just a step or two ahead of everyone else and Fever is a lesson in physics that's fun to follow along with.