Unlike my other favorite bands I cannot recall the instant at which The Books struck. Rather than the impetus of single moment, The Books embody the sequences of memory. Personally, statements like the one above step outside the boundaries of popular music. Popular music can be forever expanding and indefatigable, however it has yet to escape the present moment of thought. The theme might be angst or love but inevitably pop music channels its theme through instances and particular moments. This is the accessibility of pop music in its ability to create or recreate mood and feeling.

The Books, not unlike hip-hop, is autobiography. Poorly defined as indie electronic and organic-electro, The Books are an amalgam of vocal samples layered over an acoustic guitar, banjo, cello and violin. Listening to The Books for the first time, the music resembles little of what you’ve heard before, but therein lays the trick. The song “Read, Eat, Sleep” off of their debut Thought for Food (Tomlab 2002) consists mostly of samples from a spelling bee. As confusing as it seems in description the reality is surprisingly comforting. Arranged in such a way to create melody and subtle harmonies, “Read, Eat, Sleep” illuminates more than mood, but the aesthetic patterns of memory, like autobiography.

Thought for Food culls an astounding wide range of sources for its material. Golf commentators, audio from film, Thanksgiving dinner and field recordings mixed throughout congeal not to expose themselves as specific parts but a whole. “Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again” shows The Books as a bipolar inner monologue. The song rises and falls as the off-tune guitar accents the samples as well as they do in reverse. The struggle with The Books is not specifically in how easy it listens but dissecting every small detail strewn throughout.

Their second album The Lemon of Pink (Tomlab 2003) isn’t spread with as many apparent samples as the first but it hints more to the subtle nature in the process of memory. The same details are there, like sampling a Tokyo Air flight attendant on “Tokyo” highlighting not the events of a trip or vacation but the hidden sounds which form the texture of daily life. Another notable trademark of The Lemon of Pink is the use of computer digitizing to bend sampled sound into layered melody. As a result The Books cloud the listener with details, hidden or not, leading to an overall conclusion rising from the banal fragments and patterns we sense daily.

In short, in long, however said, The Books are simply that—books. The constant punning and allusions through sampling naturally makes them literate in the most unpretentious manner I have heard and seen out of a group so avant-garde. There is nothing existing outside of the group besides its music. As other group’s pretensions and influences are readily seen and provide much discussion, The Books leave me in frustration. I mean it sincerely when I say how awesome their music is, but it must be heard. In the end, I guess The Books would prove there is no end but rather it’s just music and nothing more.