The Free Design - "Kites Are Fun" (1967)

Introverts, this one's for us! Now, I mean this without malice, but if you see a few promo photos of sibling vocal group The Free Design, you might expect it's preppy fodder for the listening diets of squares that they created. The Dedrick family kept their sonic palette loaded with lighter tones, that's for sure, but the way they applied them was with substance and a will to be adventurous. For instance, I'll argue that the wordless vocal arrangement in the final minute of their cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song" is one the most purely psychedelic moments in the whole discography of the sixties. Anyhow, when Stereolab dedicates a song to you, you must be doing something right as far as artistic relevancy goes.

"Kites Are Fun," title track to their first album, is a good example of what I'm talking about. On paper, it seems like a lightweight affair: pleasant acoustic strumming, a lilting recorder piping away, a three-part harmony singing about, well, kites being fun. But the instrumental melody and vocal lines are whimsical yet unexpectedly a little haunting as well. The way the verses start airy and then pick up like a heart gone racing, as though mimicking the change of the kite from grounded to airborne as you run with it, and the lyrics going from innocent to intimate with that shift is brilliant. The voice of the narrator reveals of themself and their kite, "[W]e'd like to be a zillion miles away from everyone / 'cause mom and dad and Uncle Bill don't realize," then that transfixing bridge, "...kites are fuu-uun." Love it. You can interpret the kite as literal or figurative, but either way, I'll always applaud a song that celebrates being alone, but not lonely, and not caring a whit what others think (because they just won't get it...I mean, we all agree that Uncle Bill doesn't know shit, so why bother). The whole album is a great listen.