Album opener "I Am the Contact Kid" sounds like Brooklyn's
Mixel Pixel are shooting for a mishmash of popular indie rock styles from about a decade previous to the release of their debut album. It starts as a narcotic plod in the style of
Codeine or the other slowcore bands, mixed with the arch vocals and weird noises of
Pavement and their similarly ironic lo-fi ilk, before the whole thing finishes with a triple-time evocation of the second rank of Elephant Six bands. The rest of this album continues in this indie rock-in-a-Mixmaster vein, throwing in bits of
Beck ("At the Arcade"),
Yo La Tengo ("Penny Rocket/Romantic"), and various bits of electronica in the samples and found sounds that infiltrate nearly every corner of the album. That last element of
Contact Kid in particular makes the album a tiring listen: it's as if the band is trying to fill every corner of the arrangements in the hopes that the listener won't notice how tiresomely unoriginal the songs are.
Mixel Pixel offer evidence of more than enough talent to make
Contact Kid an entertaining listen despite its flaws, but with higher-quality songwriting and a producer who's willing to tame their arrangement excesses, they could do much better next time. ~ Stewart Mason