Psychedelic flights of fancy can often double for fantastical children's entertainment. Like Alice in Wonderland and the Yellow Submarine movie, the latest record from Canadian art-popsters The Rheostatics is a phantasmagoric journey through strange worlds, populated by grotesque and goofy characters, all of which will surely delight the very young and the very stoned. The packaging is bound like a book, with Dave Bidini writing the story and Martin Tielli drawing the illustrations. Theirs is the tale of two young siblings who, on the way to numbingly academic music lessons, get lost in a lush garden and eventually stumble into a portal leading to an upside-down land where they discover how playful, how intuitive, how fun musicmaking can be. It's a theme that's obviously close to the band's heart. Not bound by convention or commercial concern, they indulge their imagination in twisting, tuneful, harmony-drenched pop songs seeming inspired in equal measure by The Beatles, The Kinks, They Might Be Giants and XTC. The friendly female voice of Janet Morassutti provides the between-song narration and, although Bidini's story is shaky, the combination of surreal, pastoral imagery and inventive music often makes for a mind-blowing trip.

Sunday, January 23, 2000

Rheostatics sing in harmony