Escalade - 'X's and O's'

That Greg Sullivan – a.k.a. Escalade – isn’t exactly a typical singles artist becomes evident pretty soon after the needle drops on this, his debut single. About as knotted as Sullivan’s trek from New York to New Zealand and Tokyo, Japan (where the multi-instrumentalist currently resides), ‘X’s and O’s’ lurches unsteadily from one section to the next like a woozy amalgam of Califone, Sonic Youth, Tortoise and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s slow-burning stuff, balancing precariously between full alertness and the disorientating drowsiness of slumberland. Allow it a while to brew, though, and ‘X’s and O’s’ unveils its considerable range of experimentalist art-rock charms. Dreamy, murky and mysterious, but seriously habit-forming too, this is leftfield pop music for people with evolved attention-spans. Roll on the album. 

Released 26/11/07 on Cuckundoo.