College/Art Rock: The Whole Fantastic World's Chime!

Releasing Chime! in 2004, the Whole Fantastic World delivers good College Rock that jams but deviates enough from the norm so that you’d guess it’s made while surrounded by the intellectually, artistically stimulating environs of campus. It’s got that Indie Rock feel like it was coming out of a college apartment building basement, but it’s also tight enough so that this isn’t just some frat band trying to get girls.

But what makes Chime! an album that catches your attention is how the drums are recorded. When Simon Lynn bangs on those toms, there’s an echoing, vacant room sound. His bass drum and kick drum are given such deep resonance while the crash cymbals just hang in the air. Recording engineer Jeremy Ferguson (Battle Tapes Recording) left his mark on this project by letting Lynn’s drums punctuate the songs.

While the guitars strum with a fuzz, electro-jazz jam, and while the keyboards sometimes sound like a throwback to the Cars, as a listener you’re hearing it all inside the drum kit—not as if the drums are overpowering but more as if they are the center of the sound. “Postcards from Out of Town” has a halt stop rhythm that lets those drums really play out a melody of sorts.

The other highlight here is “We’ve Got the Books!” which ends with a round. While the Daniel Sherron’s lyrics are the self-conscious self-talk of someone attempting to make the right first impression, the chorus saying, “One time is all it takes,” the ending round keeps adding more chances to that (“two times. . .three times. . .” etc.) as if wishing that we had more time to make the right impression, knowing that someone only truly knows us if they get to know us over as number of times. Songs should always unleash such self-talk, giving melody to our own mind-speak fears.

It appears that the Whole Fantastic World is no longer with us. If you have any updates, please let Music Spectrum now. Meanwhile, you can still get the disc through Theory 8 Records.

Thank you to the Whole Fantastic World and Theory 8 Records for the review copy.