The Caribbean

You’re forced to occupy their barren pop architecture…. You don’t understand it, but, though you might not admit it, you do hope it will understand you. Or at least not destroy you…. You feel like there’s a real live pop song in there somewhere, but it seems that most of the essential moments have been recorded over with silence or incidental noise. There’s obviously still a skeleton to hang a song on, but you start to wonder whether you’re the one who was supposed to bring it…. These songs are for real, but they’re not about disappointment, or complacency, or shame, or attention, or glee. They’re about themselves. Without ironic distance, such oblique experiments can seem exhausting. But only on the giving end: it takes a humble and prolific writer, some cunning musicians, a very patient engineer, and an overarching commitment to self-censorship to pull an album like this off.
• PITCHFORK

The Caribbean’s Discontinued Perfume is a subtle masterpiece.
• WASHINGTON POST

The brilliance of The Caribbean is subtle. It never jumps out at you, but it’s always there, hidden behind Kentoff’s off-kilter vocals. The more you pay attention (headphones help), the more you start to hear the creative production flourishes and masterful instrumentation. There’s no denying that this is progressive pop music made for the thinking fan and therefore may be difficult for the masses to grasp, but you often have to work for the good stuff.
• HARP

Let us be clear about this: Plastic Explosives is one of the finest recent records we’ve found, from any act, local or otherwise.  (It) is beautiful, plain and simple, and a treat to listen to passively. It keeps gently reminding you, though, just how subtly rich its songs are, how much it has to offer. It’s a masterpiece, tucked away in and revealing the crowded streets and quiet record stores of the District.
• DCIST

The band’s songs are weird, self-contained universes, jewel-box vignettes about artists and spies and lovers.
• WASHINGTON CITY PAPER

The Caribbean. Shadowy quintet (perhaps trio?) draped in velvet enigma. Or maybe just Steely Dan on a light-beer budget, faceless contributors scattered hither and yon, submitting stealthy sonic fragments via telephone transmissions and paper-airplane parachute drops. Descended from primo D.C. agitpop, old-school division. Certainly of the Dischord tribe (see: the flip attitude of the Make-Up or Jawbox’s raw edge).
• MAGNET

They’re taking Brill Building songs and writing them in invisible ink, turning jazz standards into Twilight Zone episodes, turning folk songs into clouds of fog.
• POPMATTERS

-The Washington City Paper’s Jonathan Fischer reviewed “Vitamin Ship”

-Washington Post feature in anticipation of upcoming shows (Fall 2018)

-Our video for “Vitamin Ship” premiered on PopMatters

-The Denver Post named “Moon Sickness” to its “Best Albums of 2014” list, as has the Washington City Paper, The Architectural Dance Society, and Erasing Clouds

-PopMatters named Discontinued Perfume the Best Indie Pop Record of 2011

-The Washington Post called Discontinued Perfume a “subtle masterpiece” in naming it to their “Best of 2011” list

-Washington City Paper Arts Editor Jonathan Fischer named the title track from Discontinued Perfume to his “10 Best DC Tracks of 2011” list

-Washington City Paper’s Ryan Little named “Mr. Let’s Find Out” from Discontinued Perfume to his “10 Best DC Tracks of 2011” list

-The Denver Post’s John Wenzel names Discontinued Perfume to his“Best of 2011” list

-DCist’s Benjamin Freed names Discontinued Perfume to his “Best of 2011” list

-KCRW DJ Eric J. Lawrence puts Discontinued Perfume in the “Honorable Mention” section of his “Best of 2011” list

If I had to contrive a term for the music of The Caribbean, it would be “storycore.”   If you sit down with the lyric sheet —- and you should, you should —- you’ll find a unique hybrid of narrative specificity and mischievous surrealism.   As a songwriter, Michael Kentoff has quietly and modestly (but, make no mistake, deliberately) struck upon his own language.   Caribbean songs are peppered with invented names and terms, populated by bureaucrats, clerks, spies, actresses who moonlight as spies, light bulbs and their switches, all glimpsed sideways with sympathy and bemusement, all in the middle of something happening.  For the most part, the stories don’t appear to have beginnings or endings as far as I can suss.   Kentoff is primarily concerned with the middle.   As a result, the words read like a Raymond Carver anthology that fell in the pool and became almost too blurry to make out.  Perhaps some musicologist historian of the future will spend time to dissect the Caribbean’s curious mythology.  Maybe then we’ll learn how much of it was real and how much imagination.  Until then, just enjoy the tunes.
• CHAD CLARK (BEAUTY PILL, SILVER SONYA STUDIOS)

The songs here have an uncanny flow from one to the next, to the point where they feel indelibly joined, a feeling heightened by the little sketchy instrumentals that cushion them from each other like sonic packing peanuts. After three albums and a couple of EPs, the Caribbean sound at home in this strange little white-collar rock place they’ve built for themselves. It’s the folk music of the new American service economy.
• PITCHFORK (SEPARATE REVIEW)

-Stereogum Interview: Quit Your Day Job (Populations promotion)