Ideal Free Distribution - Ideal Free Distribution (2007)

Pssst. Shhh! (Over here.) Still playing your Dukes of Stratosphear records? (Sure.) Miss the early Three O'Clock? (Check.) Got a Nuggets jag that just never quits? (Who doesn't?) Totally dig soft psych and moody pop? (Who, me?) Fret not, fellow junkies, our supply hasn't run out! For without fear of prosecution or extradition, ye may purchase this fair fix by this decade-old Benton, KY, band making their belated debut. IFD was "discovered" (like Columbus discovered America?) by Apples in Stereo leader Robert Schneider, and it's easy to see why that consummate pop aficionado flipped over them. The opening "Apples and Oranges" rewrites "Incense and Peppermints" with harpsichord and valiant horns-like organ. "Someone's Gonna Die" reinvests the interest accrued by the bass-drum pounding structure of the Who's "I Can See for Miles." Elsewhere, you'll hear drug traces of Love, ? and the Mysterians, Byrds, Donovan, Chocolate Watchband, Moody Blues (what a Mellotron fest!), Hollies, Buffalo Springfield, Merry Go Round, Count Five, Millennium, and more. And aren't those "bah bah bah bahs" like Pernice Brothers? Craig Morris drinks it all in, stirs it with modern production similar to Schneider's Apples, and rests his legalizing case on his genuine songwriting ability, which lifts the group out of any morass of plastic plagiarism. Topics like the chilling, antiwar "Someone's Gonna Die" and the no-holds-barred "The American Myth" (which, by the way, sounds like New Pornographers) add still more substance. The fix is in.