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While it isn’t as immediate as High Time, fans of that album and hypnotic, improvisatory music will love getting lost in The Flexible Entertainer.
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It’s experimental but aimed at embracing an audience first and furthering its makers' out-there adventures second. As such, it’s the most instantly rewarding Pit Er Pat album yet, and deserves to take the duo to a new level of recognition.
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There’s a relentless energy to the music, a beguiling mix of song styles that, on paper, shouldn’t work...but does.
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As much as anything, the record seems to be about holding the dark at bay, with stabbing riffs that jut at odd angles into the void, with frantic, interlocked rhythms that echo over silent spaces, with dance-syncopated sing-songs darting and fading into impenetrable gloom.
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Icy and stiff has been the band's M.O., but its new material demands performances that command that sparseness rather than toy with it. Had the band drawn on some of that confidence from R&B as well as the instrumentation, it could have made this record even more compelling.