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Under The RadarThe Desert Of Shallow Effects is a staggeringly good album that will deserve all of the trite adjectives reviewers will surely throw at it. [Winter 2010, p.63]
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Shallow Effects is almost shockingly coherent. Instead of a big, sprawling mess, the arrangements — which incorporate everything from glockenspiel to Mellotron — offer complex but controlled layers of sound that never seem too thick or unwieldy.
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The Desert of Shallow Effects is Kurosky’s first solo effort since dissolving Beulah five years ago, and, happily, his singular gift for melody-rich pop hasn’t deserted him.
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Unbound by a verse-chorus-verse format, the songs meander unpredictably, like a milder Of Montreal, with polymorphous sex replaced by God and health problems.
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It's a precision attack, and as lofty and lovely as these tunes can sound, even their note-perfect nature seems to hold the listener at arm's length. But the real distance in the record is generated by Kurosky's lyrics, a series of clipped phrases and red herrings loosely compiled in the shape of story-songs, rich in imagistic detail but short in the personals department.
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The places where the album feels awkward or overdone do not erase the general sense that Kurosky has returned with a sense of determination. As an album, The Desert of Shallow Effects feels not like a lark, but like a mission.