Capstan Shafts

Environ Maiden (Rainbow Quartz)

By Jonathan Shipley
Published: October 29th, 2007 | 6:07pm

Dean Wells is prolific. As a one-man band from Lyndonville, Vermont, Wells (aka Capstan Shafts) has released 17 recordings since 2002. That’s not a typo — 17 releases;. Now, through Rainbow Quartz, he’s released Eviron Maiden, 29 quirky musical pop gobbets. Prolific, yes, however that isn’t necessarily always a good thing.

The Capstan Shafts has touches of Guided by Voices and Belle & Sebastian. This particular album also has a particular Beatles feel, complete with a fake British accent. A Vermonter belting out tunes from his bedroom using fake accents spells d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r, right? Well, not quite. Sure, it’s downright silly but, for the most part, he pulls it off, singing goofily titled songs (“The Complete History of Greenland,” “Vegans and Meteors,” “The Giving Earth and Her Oils of Love”) with gusto. There’s something warmly infectious about that.

The problem is that there’s no song that clocks in at longer than a minute or two on the album. You’re just getting into tapping your foot along to “Right on the Malthus” when it abruptly ends careening into “Flip Cup Casualities.” That song will continue to play for about as long as it takes for you to tie your shoe, before another tune blasts out from the speakers. In other words, it’s frantically frenetic and fuzzy fun, yet you want to hold onto it a bit, and Wells simply doesn’t let you. “You like this song...? No? Cool. This one? Yeah! Awesome! Let’s do that again. You like this one? This one? This one?!”

Wells would do better if he catered his albums to someone without musical ADHD. Create a dozen songs, make them worthy of sitting down and listening to, extend them so that you’re not wondering what the hell just happened, and it’ll be good stuff, happy stuff, stuff you’ll want to listen to while you’re, say, repainting your kitchen on a sunny day and you don’t mind getting some drips on you.