Moose High Ball Me!

Moose High Ball Me!

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What's more surprising? That London's Moose have finally secured a U.S. release for their fourth LP, High Ball Me!, after the first three were undeserved imports? (They were dropped by a hasty Virgin in 1992 after only one release, a cobbled-together, seven-song EP of their earliest, too-formative singles called Sonny and Sam, still the poorest intro to the group.) Or that Moose are still so damn sparkling after a decade, making them four-out-of-four terrific with wonderfully inspired LPs? Or that they're even still around at all, considering the obscurity they've suffered (and the five-year span since their last LP)? Again, nearly all their contemporaries from the 1989-1993 Camden dream pop scene have withered on the vine. But Moose, the group least reliant on that scene for its inspirations and sound (despite a longstanding friendship with Cocteau Twins, who brought Moose over as a support band on their final U.S. tour), have continued to prosper, at least musically. And what a thing of pacific beauty they remain! For High Ball Me! is another proud accomplishment from a group that's always made beguiling, sunny warm, expertly textured, well-conceived, and well-played LPs (think bossa nova ambience mixed with early Glen Campbell/Jimmy Webb pop gems, a little like Ivy), while covering Wire and Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking." Each new album is like a group of songs to ice-skate to, so cool and menthol, so sweet and gliding, and High Ball Me! is yet another. One just falls for still-vintage Moose handiwork in "Keeping Up with You," "Pretend We Never Met," "The Only Man in Town" (previewed on Saltwater Records' teaser EP, Baby It's Over), like a secret schoolgirl crush. Ditto the sultry, snake-charming, violin-trimmed pop of the most unique offering, "Lily la Tigresse." Moose mainmen K.J. "Moose" McKillop and Russell Yates remain consummate stylists, infecting every selection with charm, and most of all, seductive hooks. When "Lily la Tigresse" asks, with luscious sexual entreaty, "Why can't we be as nature planned?," it sums up the grace of the LP as a whole. Few albums can match this one for sublime elegance