In the Elephant 6 family tree's mingled limbs, the solo work of Andy
Gonzales, under the name Marshmallow Coast, has branch'd off in a
similar fashion to that of the Ladybug Transistor. Meaning,
basically, lots of paisley swirls and pastoral sounds and breezy
whimsy and baroque instrumentage. And, well, on Antistar,
there's also lots of flute. Even though he's done time closer to the
E6 centre — in Of Montreal and Music Tapes, with on-disc
help from Neutral Milk Hotel types — Gonzales doesn't plump for
the same fuzztone tones and storybook wonder that the nebulous
conception of Elephant 6 can easily evoke. Instead, there's something
quite demure about his own homemade indie-pop prettiness, his
penmanship often settling down in a mode easily equated to
earnestness. What finds Gonzales' sixth such disc feeling a little
lighter is all that flute, with Sara Kirkpatrick's twilling woodwind
lilting through the sunny tunes like some soft summer breeze blowing
through the screen and across the floor to where his songwritten
confection stands like some newly-frosted cake. If you catch Gonzales
smiling in the kitchen, that seems to suit the mood here too, the
record's rhythms often kept to a syncopated beatbox beat whose slight
samba-ish swing seems to remind of the gentle Brazilian influence
that often crept into soft-pop in the early '70s.
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