Your Orgasm - HollAnd

Short and sweet -- 14 songs in 25 minutes -- hollAnd's Your Orgasm can serve as a more than fine primer for homegrown indie pop, bedroom style, in the late '90s. Drum machines ticking along, warm keyboard fuzz, guitar, and real percussion here and there, guest vocals from friend/label boss Jenny Toomey -- Trevor Kampmann uses them all to winsomely entertaining effect. Some songs are mere instrumental fragments, unsurprisingly, but they add to the glazed and summery feeling of the end results nicely. Though the album title might suggest nothing but squelchy sex songs (and there's more than a few lyrics about such a subject), Your Orgasm tends toward the gently emotional, even with songs possessing loaded titles like "Face Against Your Thigh" and "Amateurs and Teens." Kampmann's singing slots easily into the Magnetic Fields/Orange Cake Mix less-is-more approach, sweetly drifting amid the beats and melodies and suiting. To his credit, especially given the short length of Your Orgasm, Kampmann demonstrates some smart creative variety throughout, as with the slightly more conventional but still fine guitar-led "The Phone," which becomes a little psych-nugget almost in spite of itself (admittedly, the flute or recorder doesn't hurt). Check out the wonderful "Three Women," a slow, moody number full of implicit drama thanks to the surging keyboard and guitar combination, even as Kampmann's singing remains hushed. "Tylenol" also slots into that category, bass tones and a bit of drumming and keyboards providing the minimal bed for Kampmann's delivery. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide