From what I can gather, the mysterious PENNY NATION aren't actually a band as such, more a collective featuring a group of performers and producers from Minnesota utilising the vocal talents of one Lydia from Mother's Favourite Child.
All very obscure and enigmatic, but "The Invisible Movie Soundtrack" is an interesting project and one which - despite the title's obvious experimental intent - deserves to be taken on musical merit. Actually, as imaginary soundtracks go, this is probably the best this writer has stumbled across since Barry Adamson's equally evocative "Moss Side Story."
Mind you, I should point out straight off that there's little point squandering precious time over the content of the 'movie' itself. The colourful sleeve 'script' notes come on like a bizarre mutation of Tolkein and cryptic Fall lyrical out-takes (sample: "Supposing that the Omnicrunk had given way to the intense heat of the Nogoblin's breath, the visitor would surely have perished in an ashen grave" - unh??), but while they fire the imagination, I doubt you'll be able to draw any conclusions other than confusion, so just dive into the music.
It's evocative, scene-setting stuff, too. Kicking off with the treated Fender Rhodes and lonely piano interludes of "North Suck 3", we're taken on a rollercoaster of styles, most of which work well enough without visuals. Certainly there's some catchy retro-pop like "She Sings To Me", which pits Lydia's gorgeous vocal against Beach Boys harmonies, a great sunburst of a chorus and plunking "Harvest"-style banjo and other potential single culls such as "Disappear", the urgent, hypnotic rock of "Green Song #5" (sinister opening line: "Somebody stopped me from killing someone today")and the smooth, Eryka Badu-ish soul of "Darwin" all present and correct.
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But "The Invisible Movie Soundtrack" is equally successful when it pulls off the mainstream Hollywood highway and heads down the pot-holed byways. Hence tracks like the hectic, car-chase funk of "Jim's Truck", with the Curtis Mayfield wah-wah interludes; "Down Town", which marries "Shaft"-style clavinets with the nervy, fractured funk David Byrne showcased on "The Catherine Wheel" OST, or the strung-out but attractive lounge-core of "EZ Girl."
Perhaps inevitably, the main criticism your reviewer would fling at this project is that the stylistic island hopping can seem like purely style over content at times, and while some of the ambient experiments such as "Mr.Rogers" or "Gan" are all very well, without a visual counterpart they are rather redundant and other tracks like the flamenco track "Pramahna" are well constructed but a bit "Look, Mummy, I can do THIS as well," ensuring we admire rather than connect emotionally with what they're doing.
Nevertheless, with "The Invisible Movie Soundtrack", Penny Nation have created something intriguing and pregnant with possibility, even if the eclecticism threatens to usurp it at times. It'll certainly appeal to fans (like me) of cult soundtrack composers like Roy Budd, Lalo Schifrin and Richard Rodney Bennett and you won't have to worry about it dying an ugly death at the box office either.
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