Unlikely Summer Jams 2007: Patrick Cleandenim/The Free Design

fly away, originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

When I first read about Patrick Cleandenim on marathonpacks, my interest was piqued by the references to Rufus Wainwright. Though the song posted there did not immediately grab me, I did some research (it's what all the kids call scouring Youtube, honestly) and was intrigued by the Daytrotter-profile, but more so the video for So You Think You're Gonna Live Forever, all black and white and Coney island-retro.

Distributed in the US by Ba Da Bing!, suitably the same label that brought us Beirut (the band now out-Google-ranking the country it took its name from, crazy), the 21-year-old multiple media artist's album Baby Comes Home was recorded with a twelve-piece orchestra. Though some of his tunes sometimes lean towards Belle & Sebastian, Cleandenim's ambition, according to his myspace page, seems to be the more restrained Bacharachian space-age pop of David Axelrod or Joe Meek, rather than Rufus' cabaret and Garland-influenced stylings. My favorite song by Cleandenim (Patrick Clendenin Roberts from the musical city of Lawrence, Kansas), Days Without Rain (mp3), seems to have different roots than Rufus, but all the album's songs could have easily been performed by Dusty Springfield or Dionne Warwick in their heydays. With its intoxicating stop-start structure, the waltz' chorus-style vocals recall those of easy-listening records by baroque pop innovators like The Free Design.

The Free Designers (active from 1967 to 1972, and also in 2001) are admittedly a little bit more hyperactive, their Enoch Light-produced work lovingly reinvents pop-hits like California Dreamin', Happy Together and Light My Fire as orchestral pop-singalongs for modern living. Their own originals, as head on the wonderfully issued best of on Varese Sarabande, are playful and jazzy (not in the noodly, but in the unexpected and inventive sense of the word). Bubbles (mp3) is infantile in the best kind of way, preserving a sense of wonder and simple melodic joy. Though the verse reveals a child's set of worries, "ma ‘n’ pa are arguin’ again; today I lost my best friend; the kitty has a little cold; ‘n ‘ grammama is getting older, my tummy has a little pain; ‘n’ when does Jesus come again?", the overall bubble-happy sound definitely warrants its inclusion on the Powerpuff Girls soundtrack (albeit in a Dressy Bessy cover).