Track Listing

1. Futures
2. Throw It All Away
3. Seeing Things
4. The Pageant Of The Bizarre
5. You're My Flame
6. Left Behind
7. Today
8. This Fine Social Scene
9. Your Place
10. If I Can't Have You
11. Crosses
12. Waiting To Die

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5889 in Music
• Released on: 2006-06-06
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Zero 7, aka Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns, are back with a gorgeous new album, The Garden. It was produced by Sam and Henry and mixed by Phil Brown, who has worked with such luminaries as the Rolling Stones, Brian Eno and Talk Talk. It features vocal performances by Jose Gonzalez, Sia Furler and Henry Binns. The band’s previous albums, Simple Things and When It Falls, were critically acclaimed and rooted them firmly alongside Royksopp & Lemon Jelly as leaders in their field. The Garden sees Zero 7 take a fresher, more upbeat musical direction while still maintaining their trademark sound, and could well turn out to be the soundtrack to the summer.

Amazon.com
"Upbeat" seems like an odd description of a recording that includes song titles like "Throw It All Away" and "Waiting to Die." Yet fans of Zero 7 (the English sound-design duo of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker) will indeed discover that the group's third release exhibits a slightly more animated pace--more multitempo than downtempo--than its predecessors, the seductively trippy Simple Things and the like-minded When It Falls. Craving a follow-up to the breathy, interstellar soul of "Destiny" from the group's debut disc, or "Passing By" from When It Falls? You may struggle to find similar magic here. Even so, The Garden is an intriguing listen, showcasing the sophistication that makes Zero 7 the Steely Dan of chillout--wry, intelligent lyrical observations, inventive musicianship, a detached sense of cool forged by the duo's heady blend of folk, jazz, '70s soul, and electronica. The Kraftwerk-like "Seeing Things"--the disc's lone instrumental--and the pulsing "You're My Flame" are useful tracks to gauge this album's elevated vibrancy. Sia Furler is the group's only returning vocalist, and the absence of Sophie Barker and Tina Dico, the gentle Christine McVie counterpoints to Furler's rough-hewn Stevie Nicks, is noticeable. Mozez and his Seal-like soul is also gone, replaced by more folk/pop-oriented José Gonzãlez. Binns even spends 80 seconds as the quiet lead voice on the slow-building brass outburst "Your Place." Furler's up-and-down vocals on "The Pageant of the Bizarre" will stick in your mind, but her best work comes on two clever lampoons of pampered lifestyles, "This Fine Social Scene" and "Waiting to Die." (Sample lyric: "Now is a good time for tasty glass of wine; let's not worry ourselves about carbon dioxide.") Different, yes, but worthwhile. --Terry Wood

Customer Reviews

Zero7's The Garden
This is a wonderful unusual new music. Where most music is canned, packaged, and group surveyed this feels clean and alive. They are an amazing group of talented musicians, gifted singers with some amazingly alive songs.

Love it
I am new to this group, and I freakin' love the Garden. I guess given the other reviews, I should go and listen to their other stuff, but as an introduction, I'm totally enamored.

How Does Your Garden Grow?
Zero 7's first two albums embody the warmest melancholy I've ever heard, the musical crack when a frown is bent into a smile, the slight hum when the sighs of the heart are torqued from end to end into a bass and treble clef. Fans of the UK-based duo will know what I'm talking about: never has distant sun seemed so cool, never have lonely breezes brushed so warm.

"The Garden" is an interesting turn for the group. They've traded in Simple Things for a complex cornucopia of backyard flora. Their normally cascading melodies have each been caught When It Falls and planted into sunny soil, well-watered, loamy, rich, healthy. The result is certainly beautiful, even if it doesn't sway with the same sweet bitterness that made the first two records such deep, soulful successes.

You still have the duo's uncanny ability to mold a tune, and Shia's unmistakable pipes are still present, but now there's an almost Playskool type of playfulness to songs with lyrics and titles that are less than sunny. "Waiting To Die" sounds like an adult's nursery rhyme. "You're My Flame" is a brassy, brash digi-pop ditty. "Throw It All Away," with its muted trumpets and synthesized swoops, is about as groovy as Zero 7 gets, with a smirk thrown in to boot. And "The Pageant of the Bizarre"? It sounds exactly like the name implies; like a circus calliope that's been retro-fitted with a few extra pipes.

The group's usual simmer isn't gone. "Crosses," "If I Can't Have You," "This Fine Social Scene," and "Futures" are all reminiscent of the early years of Zero 7. But in keeping with this new, deep-rooted direction, the tunes all bristle with a new, restless energy. The trademark instrumentals suffer some under the buzz ("Your Place" gets a bit big-bandish), but the vocalized songs flourish under this brand new solarity.