It's odd to think, but spaced-out pulse-rock maestros Orange Can aren't so far removed from Paula Abdul – both have had serious back injuries that have resulted in quite a lot of prescription medication being necked.
But where this medication appears to have turned Abdul into a permanently giggling space cadet who barely seems to know where she is half the time, it's spurred Orange Can onto produce their third album Exit Chasing – a pulsating, low-key shuffled groove of an album that genuinely couldn't be any more lovely.
Imagine if The Beta Band hadn't gone mad, or the King Biscuit Time album hadn't sent Steve Mason into a confusing hermetic meltdown, or if the album by The Aliens actually sold any records. If even one of these things had happened, we suspect that there'd be a lot more albums like Exit Chasing by Orange Can around by now. But there aren't, and that's why Exit Chasing is an album to be treasured.
We'll happily plead ignorance about Orange Can up until this point, but if any of their work is half as good as Exit Chasing we might need to have to fight you for whatever copies of their old albums we can find anywhere. Here's what we know, anyway – Orange Can are James and Jason Aslett, brothers who crafted homemade album Entrance From The High-Rise well enough to get them signed, and then followed it up with Home Burns, which The Times apparently called "intoxicating."
But onto this album – Exit Chasing is the kind of gorgeous, rhythmic indie music that might have been more popular if The Stone Roses had explored Fool's Gold territory a bit more before dissolving into the world's worst Led Zeppelin tribute act. Pinned together by loose, grooving Krautrock drumming (so that's how Orange Can got their name…) Exit Chasing draws in influences from everything from Nick Drake to Pink Floyd to acid house, and the end result is as lovely and unassuming as might imagine.
Exit Chasing opener All Up There is almost wilfully muted, with sad trumpets combining with wordless sighs before slowly exploding into a drizzle of widescreen acoustic guitar and mumbled lyrics that we think might be about sunrises. Not that the lyrics mean all that much on an album like Exit Chasing anyway – we can count the words we managed to understand without consulting the lyric sheet on the fingers of one hand.
Although the pace picks up a little from All Up There – electric guitars are introduced, the beats get a little more insistent – the rest of Exit Calling is just a series of variations on that theme. So Bright 2 digs itself so deeply into a groove that involuntary head-nodding comes as standard, while Your Rays and Eyes Wide tie in the spacier elements of Shuggie Otis' brief career. At times – like on So Bright 1 and Apes – Orange Can stray just a little too far into the realm of prog for any sensible person's liking, but any sins are gloriously rectified by closer Fortified; it's the most focused, driven thing on the whole album and builds to the extent where the 10:27 running time seems painfully brief.
Exit Chasing by Orange Can probably isn't the album for people who get off on giant choruses – the closest the band come is on the drumskin-tight Fires – but if you're in the market for some mind-expanding enchantment, you could do worse than seeking it out. Above all, let's be thankful that Orange Can haven't followed Paula Abdul to the extent that there's a duet with a cartoon cat anywhere to be seen.