Floating Action
Floating Action
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Label: Park the Van
Summer day-drinking is usually a pretty dicey proposition. Whether you’re lucky enough to own a pool or know someone who does or if you’re the intrepid sort that likes all-day outdoor music events, you’re likely familiar with the strange biochemical effects that the synergy of solar photons and alcohol have on the human physiology. On one sunny Fourth of July in years past, I found myself anchored on boat in the middle of a Puget Sound inlet, having not much else to do to but mix cocktails. Though blessed with some decent drinking genes, two drinks during an afternoon of goofy, easy sunshine quickly turned into an evening spent redecorating some of the inside of the cabin with mojito and half-digested salmon. Summer day-drinking is for those with courage steely enough to tempt biological fate. I’m still waiting on my federal grant money to come through to study it further.
Until then, though, I have Floating Action’s self-titled debut to approximate the effects of a few beers in glaring sunshine. For all intents and purposes, Floating Action is the solo project of North Carolinian songwriter Seth Kauffman, who has previously released a handful of solo records and produced other like-minded artists. Originally wanting to name the record Floating Action, he decided to use it as a band moniker as well, taking it from an advertised selling point of a vintage Gretsch drum pedal he’d owned. This very musical, very-gearhead term furnishes the perception that Kauffman is serious about what he does, which is in itself as dicey a proposition as the analogy I stated earlier. Floating Action is all about dub, Caribbean pop and Bossa nova, filtered through the mind of a Southern white boy who played just about everything on the record himself.
It’s amazing how well it works; the first four songs are quite the top of the lineup, plus clean-up hitter, stating the case for Kauffman’s lo-fi, Tropical breeze. “50 Lashes” establishes the languid vernacular he’s using on the record, with resonant bass chugging and rattling straight out of Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread. “Marie Claire” reminds me of some Island pop that somehow got beamed to ’00s America from out of the ’60s tropics. “To Connect” and later, “Don’t Stop (Loving Me Now),” are the sonic approximations of the ocean reflecting strung electric lights hung at dockside. During songs like this, you start to realize how perfect Kauffman’s choice of album art was for Floating Action. “Unrobbed” has some nifty bass acrobatics and a dusty shuffle-along rhythm that wouldn’t sound out-of-place on Hacienda’s stellar 2008 debut.
Kauffman’s missteps are few but do blemish the record. Much more a producer and arranger than a lyricist, some lines seem particularly clumsy; “Oh Marie Claire…ambitious as the next working woman” and “Cinder cone, cinder cone/ Ee hold the spirit wars behind the cinder cone” come to mind, making me wonder if these songs just begged Kauffman pen a lyric. Elsewhere, on “Cinder Cone (part II)”, Kauffman tries our patience with a reprise resplendent with George Harrison sitarisms and Lesile-fied vocals. “Dying Punch” and “Could You Save Me” could have been shaved, each sounding like scratchy, drunken demos of any adult contemporary singer-songwriter one normally wouldn’t give the time of day to. Fortunately, the delights do take center stage on Floating Action and it’d be a mistake to not give into its woozy appeal at least once while the sun is hot.
by Chris Middleman
