By: Ross Edwards
Rating: 10/11

What? A band that sounds like nothing before and still sounds great? Hasn’t everything been done? How does this happen? The New York-based Capillary Action has found a way, and a sound that is hysterically addicting. This massive ensemble could be said to play progressive-rock/jazz/classical, with killing songs and impeccable performances. The seamless flow of stylistic melding on “Placebo or Panacea” takes the catchy melody through Latin-tinged, Elvis Costello-like moods and angular, odd-meters, with absurdist clarity and deviousness. The song is beautiful and ugly in succession, and on occasion simultaneously.

It’s a stretch, but “Elevator Fck” is a barely contained Burt Bacharach song—not literally, but the horn, string, and mallet instruments blend so beautifully with Jonathan Pfeffer’s rather straightforward singing, and all this within the confines of something also courageously spontaneous and squalid. “Bloody Nose” is metal, avant-classical with string sections that climb atonally as the band gets effectively metal, then of course breaks into an oddly beautiful melodic section, yet is never far from bittersweet dissonance. A wonderfully slow and heavy interlude (is that a double kick drum?) leads the listener further into the dense forest of unique songwriting (a weird element: the very out-of-tune acoustic guitar at the end of the track).

And this is only from their most recent 2008 album, “So Embarrassing.” Songs from “Cannibal Impulses” (2006) sound completely different, far more electronic, sampled, distorted, and without horn or string sections, or many discernable played instruments. The connection is in how strangely good sounding jumbled sections are back-to-back. They incorporate recognizable samples: Jeff Goldblum’s profoundness (from Jurassic Park) on “The Program Kept Crashing,” and perhaps an overlay of pianist Bill Evans with clarinets from Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”  This is beside the point; the point is: Capillary Action should sound like a jumbled, disgruntled mess, but it doesn’t. Well, maybe it does, but that’s not a bad thing—it also sounds amazing.