The Star-ChicagoHeights-Star.com
cd reviews • November 2007
John Everson
Launch and Landing

   This is one of those discs that I almost passed by. The cover treatment is bland and uninteresting, and the first strains of music from the speakers scream "indie band" - echoing reverb and a "faraway" kind of "recorded live" sound almost led me to hit the eject button.

   But then I listened a little more to that spaghetti western bass and guitar and the sensual drifting vocals of Danielle Kimak Stauss, and soon I was lured into the spell of The Lost Patrol. This is the band that The Raveonettes want to be.

   Everything on "Launch and Landing" is drenched in surf-tone reverb; the drums are almost lost in a warehouse-y echo. But from the mix, Stauss' alluring vocals whisper and wail and sell every song. Sometimes sounding a bit like Echobelly in her pure-voiced delivery, and sometimes more shimmeringly ethereal, she leads the band through 13 tracks on this amazing sonic excursion, including a hidden extra track, "Shimmy," which is actually one of the best songs on the disc.

   In "Only Love" she croons amid a dreamy mix of retro keyboards to deliver the key lyric "Only love will save you now" before the bass turns up a strutting gallop in "AWOL" and the "Rawhide/Ghost Riders in the Sky"-style guitars take over for pretty much the rest of the album. The arpeggiating guitars and whispering delivery of the track "Speak to Me" is reminiscent of the original '80s incarnation of Throwing Muses, heavy on atmosphere and dark vibes.

   The Washington Post called their sound "retro-surf-alternative-cocktail rock" which I suppose captures it as good as anything. This is an album that listens like a hip movie soundtrack. Dreamy, evocative, and catchy in a sneak-up-on-you kind of way.

   Coolness factor: 10! Highly recommended.

   To find out more on the band and to hear music samples, check out their site at www.thelostpatrol.com.

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