With the exception of the layered,
Pet Sounds-esque opening track (the lovely "Like Wind Like Rain"),
Flash Paper Queen: The 4-Track Demos features skeletal, home-recorded versions of the ten songs that ultimately became the Flash Paper Queen album. Penned and performed by
Doug Kabourek (aka
Fizzle Like a Flood), these deliberately lo-fi recordings capture the naked emotion of his tunes, proving that the essential content of his material can be conveyed with just a voice and a guitar. Interestingly, there's little variation in sonic quality between the songs that were recorded on an eight-track and those that were played into a cheap mono tape recorder, but
Kabourek works well within limitations; armed only with an endearingly untrained voice and some basic chords, he delivers his quirky but earnest indie pop songs quite effectively. ~ Andy Hinds