The organ-based, psychedelic easy-listening offered by Rocketship sounds like a cross between Stereolab and the Boo Radleys - something very unusual when it comes from California. Their eight song mini-album is very well textured, balancing the organs and medieval synthesizers with girl/boy vocal harmonies.
In a way, the Rocketship sound picks up where pre-Britpop music left off, so-called shoe-gazing: dense songs with slowly developing bubbles of melody that serenely float through the air and release splendid "oooo"s and "la"s as they pop in slow motion. The addition of organs gives the music an even more synthetic bliss that deepens it and differentiates it from less successful attempts to follow in the footsteps of bands like Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, or the Boo Radleys.
Rocketship sound very sincere in their admiration for 60s experimentalism and contemporary eccentricity. Adopting the same pastoral but woozy melodic sense that the Boo Radleys did on Wake Up Boo, Rocketship add some of the droning and weird noises that are associated with Stereolab's work on Switched On (volumes one and two) and Peng!.
It might be unfair to say that Rocketship are shamelessly imitating these British bands, however, as the album was recorded before the release of the Boo's last effort, and the similarities to Stereolab can easily be accounted for by an extensive collection of and passion for early stereo-pop and electronic experimental records. Besides, the aesthetic quality of A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness is so well achieved the discussion is immaterial.
The farfisa organs give A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness an insistence that is frequently missing from projects fixated on low-impact 60s sources. And to Rocketship's credit, they refrain from what seem to be contrived attempts by Stereolab to actually annoy their listeners with purposefully jagged, experimental edges or endless single-note droning. Rocketship maintain tight control of their songs so that extended intros and outros are disciplined and effective.
The consistent quality of this mini-album warrants the attention of a fairly wide selection of listeners. While offering a similarly pleasing atmosphere, A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness succeeds in its entirety where Stereolab's collection of rarities (_Refried Ectoplasm: Switched On Vol 2) and Comet Gain's debut album sometimes sputtered. People interested in the above-mentioned shoe-gazers will like Rocketship. Fans of Velocity Girl (America's premier shoe-gazers) will likewise enjoy A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness. And ambient enthusiasts with no objection to real instruments might be interested to see Rocketship's use of the influences (i.e. non-rock music of the 60s) that also helped shape the ambient scene.
