'Catching Up To The Future'
CD album
A Hidden Agenda Record
AHA!052
795306505228
Street Date: 23 September 2003
Los Angeles combo Fonda’s third album fuses noisy shoegaze shimmer and shade with glossy hooks, prismatic blessed-out pop filtered through a battered Fender Twin. British expatriates Emily Cook and David Newton (former guitarist, songwriter, and founder of 80s UK guitar band The Mighty Lemon Drops) provide an international flavor to the proceeding along with Yankee bandmates David Klotz, Adam Flanders, and Johnny Joyner. For fans of Adventures In Stereo, Lush, Heavenly, The Cardigans, and Hidden Agenda labelmates Folksongs For The Afterlife, ‘Catching Up To The Future’ is gorgeous collision of melodic dreampop punctuated by angelic female vocals, in an ocean of guitars.
“Technicolor California pop cross-bred with British indie pop, featuring a dash of psychedelia and dreamy female vocals” ALTERNATIVE PRESS
“Is it twee? ‘60s pop? Late ‘90s indie rock? Combining the best of these genres, the Los Angeles-based Fonda wants you to remember when velour ruled, wallpaper patterns consisted of orange horizontal stripes, and egg-shaped chairs populated airport lounges… ” MAGNET
“All spy movie themes and Nancy Sinatra sexiness” YEAH YEAH YEAH
“Emily Cook’s star is rising, but that's not necessarily the best news for the band Fonda. The Los Angeles quintet with the distinctively Britpop sound crawled through work on its third album, "Catching Up to the Future," because Cook's career as a screenwriter was taking off. First there was a comedy for Paramount. Then another project. “It's good for her writing career," says Dave Klotz, Cook's husband and the band's principal songwriter, "but it was not good for getting the album done." Since 2001's "The Strange and the Familiar," Fonda songs have cropped up in various movies, such as "Spy Kids," "Down & Out With the Dolls" and the documentary "Close to Home." Now, with its guitar- and Farfisa-powered pop reminiscent of Lush or the Cardigans, "Catching Up" finally sees release [September 23] on Hidden Agenda Records. "Dreampop is a word that still probably applies," says Klotz, who shares vocal duties with his spouse, "but we've definitely turned up the volume." While songs such as "Loving You Makes Me Sad" swirl around in the ethereally wistful, the edgier "Electric Guitars" exhibits the influence of ex-Mighty Lemon Drops guitarist David Newton, who steered the studio work. “ L.A. TIMES (August 2003)
