Pitchfork

There are two types of Moms in the world: The kind that took all your Star Wars figures, your He-Man Snake Mountain playset and that plastic guitar by Tiger and shipped them off to the Goodwill in cardboard boxes; and the kind that took all those little plastic chunks of your childhood and entombed them in the attic, where they sit waiting for a boring snow day or a summer of unemployment to be rediscovered and put back into use. With all of the plastic Casio beats, Master System interludes and chirping electric knick-knacks floating in the nostalgic soup that is ABC DEF, it seems pretty obvious that Nathan Michel's mom falls into the latter category. You can almost see her hanging his spelling tests on the fridge.

There's not a slide whistle or battery-powered keyboard or Rock'em Sock'em robot that hasn't been brought along for Michel's long imaginary drive through the broken-glass crystal city of pre-pubescence: Plastic recorders whimper, lonely video games repeat their Boss Level tunes in a desperate bid for attention, and tin toys of every stripe and temperament lose their shit, filling the play room with the rusty click-clack of brass keys slowly grinding down to a halt. This isn't group play-- make no mistake-- but rather an intense session of (presumably) dextromethorphan-fueled make-believe for Michel and the monsters in his closet. And just like any other intensely private childhood game, the rules of this one are almost incomprehensible to any of us other kids who wandered in late. It's trying to play Calvinball with an autistic chess prodigy.

The framework of ABC DEF, whose title suggests a much more robust and beat-conscious affair, is fairly simple and without much variation: an abyss of fragmented loops, sometimes as devolved as a dime store Indian drum, layered with various random patterns of everything from electric acoustic guitar and acid-soaked xylophone ("Pound Louder") to the fluctuations of walkie-talkie frequencies backed by scrambled-egg organs ("Thirty Six to Forty Two"). The composition technique here is extremely randomized and discordant in some places, more consistent and even catchy in others; "Untitled" remains anonymous probably because it shares an ear with Team Doyobi and even Phoenecia for sublimely sick rhythms crafted from decimated analog clicks and burps, interrupted by a tense melody right out of Kangaroo. And the sorrowful atmosphere generated by the faded Casio beat of "Hello (Constant Sorrow)" is as tender as it is cardboard-worthy. This is the senior year soundtrack for the love-struck kids at Nintendo High, but it starts the album off with a misleading message.

The majority of ABC DEF is not a big slumber party, but rather the story of one kid alone in his room, under the covers with a flashlight, plagued by a head cold and too much cough syrup. Some fascinating ideas spill out from Nathan Michel's fevered dreams, fully formed (the anthill micro-rave of "Mufice") and brief (the telephone coma that wraps itself around "Hosey"), but introverted fantasies like this are going to take four years of art school and some heavy drinking to make sense of.

But then again, maybe some kids were just meant to play alone.