variations on a theme? not om. not hadyn. just that i’ve got a pile of this-kind-of-thing mooching desk space right now; from the ever reliable in the red, is john dwyers newest as thee oh sees; slightly surprisingly from de stijl, the (overly?) perky pens record; and the vivian girlsish rocket-spunk conciseness of brilliant colors on slumberland. all good in their own way. but in light of the time:music ratio i’ve plumped to wordage this canny bugger (and attached some empeethree’s for the others). and by this-kind-of-thing i mean whatever’s vaguely garage related. obviously.
so the mantles. inhabiting the underground (both velvet and paisley). chucking out, in a brevitous half hour, ten songs with a zonked swagger. releasing the bugger on siltbreeze. can’t really go wrong can you? the answer’s no incase you were wondering.
it’s one of those strange records that seems to belong to no particular era, tendrils snaking under the skin of fifties rock and roll, sixites surf, seventies psyche, eighties garage revival and cassette pop. all these things smudge together into one hazy smear, a hypno-droning, foot-tapping, spiky chuggery of woofwoofwoof.
it’s all amphetamined jitter and jangle and jigger like some bermuda triangle where late-period vu, lyres and the byrds intersect. not entirely sure if i just described clinic there… but musically exemplified by disappearing act. anyway what it all boils down to is this:
kind of a narcotic garage rawk covered in dreamy gauze and smoggy fuzz of reverb and lo-fi pop stomp. as in what we do matters. kind of a trebly paranoid downer ballads, acid-burned and laconic, sassed-up melodiousness. as in look away, which has some awesome organ wooze on there.
and that’s just the opening triumvirate…
oh and i really dig the cover. an oddtastic photo, washed out gorgeous, from the olden days of virginia weatherby’s father gawky awkward and besuited, clutching a jimi hendrix pic, framed by mountainous skyline.
