Family Dynamics

Though there's nothing yet to hear from Family Dynamics—the quartet is recording its debut album during the months before Hopscotch—plenty can be gleaned from the band's lineage.

The Brooklyn quartet is, essentially, a more compact version of the now-defunct Stars Like Fleas. That band claimed an amorphous roster, growing at times to dozens of members sharing a stage. The band's final album, The Ken Burns Effect, was released by Hometapes in 2008. Like the other acts that call Hometapes home, including locals Megafaun, Stars of Fleas were defined by their genre-crossing approach to experimental pop; their music is as adventurous as it is inviting. The physical size of the ensemble aided in the band's lush, swelling dynamics and unpredictable approach to songwriting, which moved from patient drones to fitful outbursts, and crossed boundaries between hushed, intimate chamber-pop, stately country balladry, shimmering electronic pop and clattering improvisation. Composed of former Fleas Shannon Fields, Ryan Sawyer, Laura Ortman and Shelley Burgon, Family Dynamics is, in its own words, "continuing (with some reinvention) to hunt down the same spectral vermin they have always hunted within their prior incarnation together." With more logistical structure, one imagines they'll be able to harvest riper fruits of consistency.

Fleas leader Shannon Fields (who will also play Hopscotch with the Duane Pitre Sextet) debuted another project, Leverage Models, in early 2011, with Interim Deliverable, the first of three EPs (the second and third are forthcoming). Where Stars Like Fleas favored a patient approach built on smoldering soundscapes, Leverage Models favor a more immediate approach. With synth timbres and insistent melodies reminiscent of Brian Eno and John Cale's 1990 collaboration, Wrong Way Up, Leverage Models seem to be fascinated with a more direct, if no less experimental, approach to songwriting. This might offer another clue as to how Family Dynamics might separate itself from Stars Like Fleas. But, most likely, we'll just have to wait until September to find out just what kind of treat this band has in store for us. —Bryan Reed