Candy Claws

For a band that met in an evangelical church, Candy Claws sure is Eastern in its approach. For one thing, all the lyrics on this album were constructed by sending phrases from Richard M. Ketchum’s The Secret Life of the Forest through a website that translates things into Japanese and back again. Then there’s the unusual chords and melodies that arose from principal members Ryan Horver and Kay Bertholf writing the whole thing on the one standard pop instrument they didn’t know how to play: keys. But it’s not really fair to call the resulting sounds Eastern. More like Zen, because they sort of laid hands on the keys and let the music come. You’ll hear some ’70s in there, because that’s what the two were listening to at the time. Think Pet Sounds, except we know the influences came mostly from out-of-print vinyl.