2011 line-up, L-R: Colin Hacklander (Drums), Michael Harrist (Double Bass), Jonathan Pfeffer (Vocals, Nylon-String Guitar), John DeHaven (Trumpet), Julian Chin (Accordion).
Photo by Jonathan Dy.
Equal parts samba school density and Beefheartian primitivism; pure pop bliss and chamber ensemble precision, Capillary Action are an American musical ensemble that cannibalize a wide variety of sources to synthesize a cubist, confrontational take on classic pop forms.
Led by composer/singer/guitarist Jonathan Pfeffer, Capillary Action’s music is typified by its frenetic pace, dense harmonies, broad dynamics, elastic rhythmic interplay, and confessional tone. Far from pastiche or collage, central to Pfeffer’s modus operandi is the challenge of eliminating the distinctions between chaos and clarity, art and pop, consonance and dissonance to communicate complex, ambiguous, and extremely personal experiences through song.
Since 2005, Capillary Action has shared stages far and wide alongside Beirut, Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors, Rhys Chatham, Shudder to Think, Les Claypool, Dengue Fever, and Lightning Bolt; and has made appearances at international festivals including Willisau Jazz (Switzerland), Primavera Sound (Spain), Incubate (Netherlands), Budějovický Majales (Czech Republic), Poprevo (Denmark), LOLA (Canada), and British Wildlife (England).
Pitchfork
Capillary Action’s songs have the pacing of a brawl, with quiet moments to catch your breath followed by furious passages of pounding rhythm and dissonant swells. [But] they’re all subordinated to songs with Pfeffer’s even, baritone vocals adding a strong melodic center for the listener.
The Wire
Musical fragments are layered one upon another, resulting as often in dense polyrhythm as they do in deliciously intertwined melodic lines.
The Onion AV Club
Shake Capillary Action before opening; you never know what might come out.
Pop Matters
Capillary Action’s music is like a perplexing film that you have to (and want to) watch more than once.
Tiny Mix Tapes
Impetuously, but fitfully, charging out of the speakers like an impatient interviewee trying to get their words in against an implied Bill O’Reilly, Capillary Action’s Capsized is an odd sort of juggernaut.
Exclaim
Capillary Action are not for the faint of heart. Capsized is their sophomore album, but there’s nothing sophomoric about it. Starting off with a Bartok-inspired trumpet melody, the Action get serious groove with a frenetic Brazilian forró shuffle. Jonathan Pfeffer’s singing is better than on the first record; he’s simply more confident singing in an entirely full-throated manner to convey the paranoia, anger, absurdism and hope of the politically charged lyrics. Capillary Action have upped their game creating imaginative polyrhythms, which shift like tectonic plates throughout the course of a three-minute song. And when a groove locks in (which happens at least twice in different ways in a song), it’s mesmerizing.
Organ
Ferociously, hallucinatorily detailed, truly avant pop. Their luscious, sleek sound, part close harmony barber shop, part samba band…is structured around difficult, discombobulating melodies that constantly derail your train of thought and twist your ears. The tension of Bernard Herrman’s Psycho and Taxi Driver orchestrations with Pfeffer’s vocals doing 12-tone acrobatics -there can’t be too many other bands headed by Schoenberg-influenced club singers out there. There’s nobody quite like them.
Drowned in Sound
Capillary Action is a rubber ball, bouncing about four walls and a stained-glass roof, each impact reshaping it into some wonderfully different object. It’s the “Back To The Future” series condensed into a 30-minute soap opera, Darwin’s most intellectual theories spray-painted across a Greyhound bus.
L.A. Record
This wasn’t Boingo spazz, but it was far too fun to be prog, and the line-up of accordion and trombone gave me the odd sensation that I was watching a post-ska Eighties band break it down in The Young Ones’ living room. Or maybe it was Elvis Costello meets the Minutemen. All I know is that one of their songs literally sounded like “Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny” without any of the tape manipulation.
Skyscraper
[Capsized is] an album perfectly demonstrating the chaos, pleasure, confusion, and amazement inherent in life.
Forest Gospel
Capsized is an album filled with corners, turning you a sharp ninety degrees in one direction before sloping back a quick one-fifty and spitting you out in another direction. That being the case, preliminary listens can be a bit disorienting. It’s an adventure listen, there’s no doubt about that. This is what Capillary Action has a mind for: Spinning you so precisely as to unravel your brain tissue. So press past disorientation. This is an album that rewards every repeat listen bountifully. Upside-down as often as it is right-side-up, Capsized is another agitated notch of maniacal, rib-loosening pop music from the constantly inventive Capillary Action.
Boston Phoenix
Both Elvises in a serious Burt Bachawreck with the Mothers of Invention. But even as this all-acoustic quintet pull their best white-rabbit impression, darting behind any available obstruction, it’s clear they want you to follow them — and Jonathan Pfeffer makes sure his soaring, seizing, stammering, polymath out-bursts are worth following.
