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Published on 7/4/08
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Gossamer introspection amid swirling keyboards and keening falsettos has never quite evaporated from indie pop. It’s just not the sole province of English performers anymore. The U.K. label 4AD, which gave a generation of mopey goth kids a reason to live through their high-school graduations, hasn’t lost its touch for Cocteau Twin-ing. But its current shining stars are not London art-school dropouts. They’re from Baltimore.
The trio Celebration earns the ethereal stamp of approval on its sophomore recording, which seeks the sublime in often earthy sources. Multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis commands a battery of electronics, but often powers the band’s dense, stately songs with the resonant sweep of a Wurlitzer organ. He brandishes fat swatches of aural texture for Katrina Ford’s voice to swerve about in, often lent increased drama by mixing-board echoes and her own stagey enunciations of lyrics. It’s a measured kind of pleasure, indulgently possessed of glammy shimmer. Yet, as they do on “Fly the Fly,” the musicians can rock out when they need to, packing some muscle inside their velvet gloves.
Celebration plays Empty Bottle Friday 23.
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