Page France and the Family Telephone

Page France and the Family Telephone
Label: Suicide Squeeze
Length: LP
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Page France and the Family Telephone
Page France maintains its crush on whimsical indie-pop with album No. 3, and one need not sport a ‘What Would Jesus Do?â?� belt buckle or anklet to dig their twee devotional music. Since the debut of Come, I’m a Lion in 2005 ‘ on which the Christian referents were overstated almost to a fault ‘ frontman Michael Nau has grown better at subtlety and metaphor-mixing, even slipping in a couple ‘damnsâ?� to see if we’re paying attention to him or the twinkling, folksy Neutral Milk Hotel’lite. Nau fairly takes the piss on opener ‘The Ruby Ring Manâ?� with the lyrics, ‘I would kiss the Devil’s cheek to get this halo off of me.â?� Soon enough, though, the group gets back to light, situation-specific evangelizing set to gentle guitars, airy keyboards, dinky xylophones and zippy horn fanfares.

This article appears in May 9-15, 2007.