Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?

Genuinely great pop music that's experimental, catchy, and, most of all, weird.

The Unicorns manage to polish an array of pawn shop instruments into miniature masterpieces.

The Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? defines indie-pop, laden with hooks boasting a charmingly lo-fi sound devoid of pretensions and true to whatever whimsy their muse has stricken them with.

The mood is buoyant, the instrumentation is varied and the childlike naivety runs rampant throughout.

They rival The Shins, or The Magnetic Fields, or any of the innumerable indie touchstones, but what truly sets Who Will Cut Our Hair apart is the near-total absence of traditional verse/chorus/verse framework in their songs; to nail beautiful, memorable lines with such remarkable ease is a feat unto itself, but to do so in essentially formless compositions is a different class of achievement entirely.

The Unicorns’ schtick isn’t very difficult to see through; they’re grown adults writing children’s songs for grown adults.

A consistent, immediately catchy album that holds up after repeated listens.

Although much of the album sounds amateurish, and sometimes painfully so, the Unicorns regularly remind us that it's all shtick.

It's the sound of people having fun. [4 Dec 2004, p.55]

To be sure, there is an ironic smirk clinging to much of Who Will Cut Our Hair..., but there is also the subtle beatings of unpretentious sympathy and maverick potential.

It’s improbably refreshing to hear musicians that were clearly weaned on Frank Zappa, Supertramp and ELO messing things up and having a laugh.

The schizophrenic tone changes recall the experimentation of Deerhoof, yet the overall sound is as natural as The Flaming Lips. [Jan 2005, p.132]

Their patchwork approach to psychedelia recalls the shoestring ingenuity of cult mid-'90s act Neutral Milk Hotel. [Jan 2005, p.104]

Strangely lovable and lovably strange, sort of like a lo-fi version of the Flaming Lips.