California’s The Corner Laughers made Matilda Effect as a bright, literate pop album with enough odd corners to keep it from feeling too tidy. Karla Kane’s electric ukulele sits alongside ringing guitar, bass, keyboards and crisp drums, while Allen Clapp’s production gives the hooks room to land. The band moves between folk-pop, power pop, light psychedelia and a near-reggae sway, with backing harmonies, violin, bells and tambourine adding colour without crowding the songs. Anton Barbeau contributes keyboards, backing vocals and one co-written track, and there’s even a cat listed among the credits for purring.
Released in 2015 after recording sessions around California, Oakland, Redwood City and Berlin, the album comes from a band active since 2006 and reaches well beyond its home state. Kane’s songs bring together new motherhood, overlooked women in science, Cleopatra, astronomy, folklore and the extinction of the passenger pigeon, so the writing has plenty to look at beneath its catchy surface. “Sophie In The Streets Of Stockholm” and “Midsommar” point toward the record’s European and Scandinavian frame of mind, while “Martha (Cincinnati, 1914)” gives its history-minded side a quietly sad focus. Fans of Belle and Sebastian, Allo Darlin’, Kirsty MacColl or XTC should find the combination of sharp lyrics, sweet melodies and live-band snap familiar, though the twee edges are softened by real instrumental weight.
