4 out of 5

Label: Digital download

Produced by: Agent Ribbons?

It starts pretty great, it middles awesomely, and then it sort of trails out at the end…  Agent Ribbons’ first (?) album plays sort of like a live set, getting warmed up to the material for a couple of tracks before really settling into a wonderful vibe, maintaining that for the majority of the runtime until some final codas at the conclusion play out a bit too long to leave a strong impression of the last song.  Still, the reverse – good opener, good closer – tends to be the norm, with plenty of filler in-between, so having the larger percentage of your album be the good part is definitely a plus in my book.  I saw Ribbons live much further in their career, and was impressed by how strong of an impression these two ladies – guitar and vocals, drums – made in a genre that’s pretty cluttered with a lot of ‘good’ without much variation.  I was happy that the single I bought at the show maintained their live sound, which leans toward folk but has enough of a rock and pop influence to it to allow for some rocking out without it just being kitschy.  Our two performers are skilled enough such that the playing, the writing, and the singing all have plenty of nuance but aren’t showy, knowing when to fall back onto a simple riff or line about a boy while adding some really catchy and inventive bridges or syncopation or some really smart passages in the lyrics that sneak between the kind of “I like you, you like me” lines you’re probably expecting, adding an extra layer of self-awareness to the words.  All of this is true on ‘Time Travel,’ meaning the group has been in fine form for quite some time.  Opening tracks ‘Buried With You’ and ‘Call Me Margaret’ both tack on epilogues or second sections which divert from the simplicity or focus of the tracks, and closer ‘Ars Moriendi’ builds to a grand swelling of harmony but, as mentioned, wanders about too long at the end.  None of these are bad tracks at all, still strongly composed, they’re just not the pieces of nigh-perfection found in the middle of the disc.

There are different chick-folk groups to name drop here, and if I was better at that game I’m sure I could pick a choice few to garner interest.  But regardless, if you like the genre at all, AR deserves a spin, and it’s good to know you can seemingly start at the beginning or end of their discography and get the right impression.