When knuckling down to the finer intricacies of classroom-based botany, there was always an endless intrigue located within the way in which evergreens would retain their spindly fingers and seasonally perfumed pines for periods of time that, at such an age, seemed just so endless. San Fran duo Seventeen Evergreen tinge such concept with finite restriction and although few artists ever muster such profuse discography (the compulsive pulses of Daniel Johnston, R. Stevie Moore, etc. aside) the wide-eyed, raging synth maelstroms of follow-up full-length Steady On, Scientist! never quite substantiate the claims of radical enterprise contained inside typically hyperbolic press releases.
Sure, future single President Clavioline is a rampant affair as home console synthesisers combine with boisterous explosions of rhythm to spark imagery of Liars cascading down their own dilated pupils as though they were Brobdingnagian rabbit holes whilst opener Polarity Song comes across a little like a louche Temper Trap doing "bad things" to the uptight propensities of Hot Chip at their most suffocatingly buttoned. However hackneyed wording re: the profound complexities of existence ("Embrace the polarity of life with all the good and bad we share" and "Life can be so overrated/ But you are just so entertaining" lyrical cases in point) and the need for frivolous folly whilst the time's right à la Pitbull almost ("There's no one like you/ There's no time like now") endow the latter with a suitably limited appeal. For if life is indeed as short as Caleb Pate purports finding time for Steady On, Scientist! may prove problematic.
Bucky gyrates to ebullient bass and buoyant twinkles of rhythm whilst Wasting Time/ Castlefield comes across as stupefied Joseph Arthur reassessing those previously affronted meanings to our divine sentience. Yet when hurled together the conflictual sonic fluctuations and synth pulsations fissure rather than fuse to provide an experience that's all too schizophrenic and far too infrequently symbiotic. The lo-fi splurge of Dancespider carries a creeping, crawling portent that's at once enamouring although it's a little number by the name of Del Paso Heights that scrapes together every aforesaid moment of limited mastery into a warm and moist and mushy and gooey blob of genuine ingenuity last heard on Misha's Teardrop Sweetheart or Miracle Fortress' LP of that very year. It's a refreshing spurt of loveliness in a record that's otherwise about as sweet as a lurid faux conifer dangling from rearview mirror.
