Invisible Hand, S/T

By Less Lee Moore

At first the name Invisible Hand conjured images of some kind of Scooby Doo villain. Discovering that the lead singer and songwriter is named “Adam Smith” (yes, his real name) made me laugh; hearing the band’s music did, too. Invisible Hand isn’t a joke band, though they are clever, both musically and lyrically. They’re also incredibly fun and addictive.

Their self-titled debut is packed with witty puns (“make these last four years count themselves” and “I caught twenty-two,” for example) or just plain weird lyrics (“once the salad enters your mind”). A generous sprinkling of random swears gives the album a fresh, cheeky feeling, sort of like a teenager with too much talent and time on his hands.

And it’s the way Smith sings the lyrics that also sucks you in. They don’t scan evenly across the melodies; you can’t predict, even on a third or fourth listen, exactly where the song is going. The opening track, “Two Chords” starts off simply enough but then introduces a drumbeat which you think will usher in some kind of bombastic bridge or chorus. But neither is forthcoming. This tension keeps you guessing—and listening to the songs until you find them wedged in your brain to the point of sonic exhaustion (the best kind).

Most of the songs on the album fit this formula, though none are formulaic and they don’t follow a verse/chorus/verse format. They start, stop, and stutter along, presenting a tight, catchy beat, pounding it into the ground, and then moving on to another one, alternating these catchy rhythms with an incongruously minimalist approach.

“I Want To Win” veers slightly from this stylistic tendency and introduces strings (which reemerge in other songs) but in a wholly non-pretentious way. It also contains perhaps my favorite lyric on the entire album: I want to win/but I don’t try to win, the lament of every overachiever crippled by both cynicism and a lack of self-confidence.

Understand, however, that Invisible Hand isn’t emo, or nihilistic, or even ironically self-deprecating. Their page on Funny/Not Funny Records quips, “Invisible Hand . . . would like for us to reference The Kinks in even the shortest description about their band.” There’s a definitely Kinks influence to be found, but it’s more of The Kinks filtered through other bands like Flop, Lilys, or even Sparks. The keyboards and piano found in songs like “Catch Twenty-Two” and “This Morning Was” have the same delightful zaniness of classic Mael brothers tunes, but more subtle.

If I had one complaint about this album, it would be the one that most reviewers have about albums of the last decade or so: too much compression in the recording. There is so much going on in these songs that flattening it out does a grave disservice to the band’s musical chops. If you’re not listening on headphones, you might miss quirky bass lines, rapid-fire drum riffs, harmonies, random feedback, and other little gems, the likes of which can be found in every single song.

Pardon this remarkably inelegant turn of phrase, but Invisible Hand is really fucking good. They are a band that is obviously smart but smart enough to not care . . . too much, that is. Based on this debut, they should also be hugely popular; let’s hope that everyone else is even half as smart as they are and figures this out quickly, because they deserve a hell of a lot more attention than they are getting.

Invisible Hand’s self-titled debut was released on November 9, 2010 on Funny/Not Funny Records, which has a link to order the album. Check them out on MySpace, Facebook, and Tumblr