Albums of the Year 2009: Bibio

Bibio, Ambivalence Avenue

The promises of electronic music, or of music made using modern studio equipment, sampling, synthesizers, and so on, are promises of range; nearly every scenario can be approximated sonically, every genre explored in unlikely ways: music made to sound like anything, and every sound made musical. It’s a noble goal, or at least a fascinating one, but in practice it’s rarely realized. Even electronic musicians tend to stay put. This only makes the few artists who do stray all the more valuable, guys like Aphex Twin, Tyondai Braxton, and so on. And it’s what makes an album like Ambivalence Avenue so refreshing.

The press on Bibio, real name Stephen Wilkerson, is that he’s been kicking around since 2004, making mostly folkie, Boards of Canada-esque electronica of middling quality for a negligible audience. An EP released early this year, Vignetting the Compost, showed no signs of deviation. But when Avenue dropped in June, Bibio of a sudden began to get attention. They started playing him on more forward-thinking radio, like WZBC 90.3 in Newton, Mass. (where I first heard him), and Pitchfork gave the album a laudatory 8.3. Soon after, Wilkerson scored licensing deals with Toyota and L.L. Bean, and now his album is showing up on end of the year lists. It’s success he’s tried to follow up on with The Apple and the Tooth, another EP, which, along with a contribution to the Warp20 (Recreated) 20th anniversary compilation disc, marks his fourth release this year. Though I haven’t really heard the other releases, the word on them is that it’s more of the mediocre same, and that Avenue is the only really notable Bibio contribution.

And that’s fine. Especially because the elements that make Ambivalence Avenue so compelling, like variety, attention to detail, and expanded vision, tend to show up more on concerted studio albums than between-album toss-offs (though Bon Iver’s Blood Bank EP, released forever ago in January, is a notable exception). And Bibio’s geography is broad on this album. The album begins, appropriately, with static, and launches, or rather lilts into the title track, a groovy vehicle driven by acoustic guitar, cowbell, and Wilkerson’s unintelligible warbling, all of it elided together to sound spaced-out. Guitar fills, fed backwards into the speakers, sound eastern, but in a way that says “Beatles experimenting with sitars” rather than “India” directly. Then we’re into “Jealous of Roses,” which sounds like Sly Stone underwater. Or, perhaps, like the memory of Sly Stone, the way the falsetto scattered throughout the album plays like Pet Sounds heard far away, or, again, like the memory of the Beach Boys. In fact, it’s hard to discuss this album without mentioning the complicated semiotics going on here, because it has so much to do with how Bibio puts his music together. Not only does the listener think of a designated influence—and there’s never just one influence operating here, of course—but of the disconnect between that artist’s milieu and his or her own, and the way that distance, whether it be the distance of summer (Beach Boys), or of dancing (Sly Stone), or of a particular place and time (being young in America in the late sixties), makes the listener feel. Bibio’s fuzzy, homage-rich packaging plays on how we experience music, pressing all the little sonic buttons that make us feel this or that.

Of course, it’s an empty concept if the music doesn’t deliver. And anchoring these explorations are some real songs. “Fire Ant” is actually danceable, a left-field gem that, with its samples of British children and wheezy drum machine, sounds for all the world like “Kids” in middle age. “Haikuesque (When She Laughs)” is beautiful, rain-drenched and jittery, and unlike a lot of this music sounds exceptional at top volume. But it ends too soon, with sound effects and a voice-over that, while not unconnected to the song’s spirit, doesn’t contribute much, either. The listener is left wondering why he couldn’t just have substituted another verse here instead. Indeed, if there’s a problem with these songs, it’s their brevity. Too often, Bibio cuts a good song short so he can filter in some sampling or ambient noise, textures that often seem unnecessary given the complexity already on display. But it’s a small failing, and a good one to have, your audience wanting more rather than less from you. Ultimately, this is an album best listened to all at once. Taken in sum, it’s a compelling, wide-ranging trip through the possibilities of memory and the options of the studio. If Bibio can refocus himself to make another album this lovely, careful, and varied, he may be around for some time.