Pick Up Sticks

This group combines madcap menace and big top bombast to craft tilt-a-whirl, carnivalesque pop. Though compared to sonic pioneers like Pere Ubu, Captain Beefheart, and Sun Ra, The Vancouver, British Columbia band eludes simple characterization. While Pick Up Sticks boasts the Horses' signature cacophony of jittery guitars, swirling keyboards, and clattering horns, it also finds the band exploring ever-shifting rhythms and expansive atmospherics. Transfixing transmissions that could have been either beamed from outer space or unearthed in a time capsule from a lost age. "They Shoot Horses, Don't They? sound like post-punks raised under a big top, albeit one under the direction of Igor Stravinsky or Sun Ra rather than P.T. Barnum" - Boston Phoenix.