Vacation’s Zen Quality Seed Crystal opens with two very strong tracks for the genus rock-type.
Both Hole that Once Held a Screw and Captain Unsensible have the spark of lo-fi magic and that can be found similarly glinting about in golden-era Brian Jonestown Massacre/Guided by Voices layering.
If the goal is to access the feeling, the production is expert. Just on the right side of coherence, it’s good and it’s probably a kind of mastery.
Daydream provide high energy and experimentation around traditional structures.
The borderline incoherent vocals are still great as instrument and texture. But the lyrics are also there on the bandcamp if you want to read the fine print:
“Can it smirk? Can I take any power from it?”
Coming out in December 2020, Mystic Operative still made the year-end list last time around the sun. Maybe because it has a strange and wonderful density to the performances. Every 2-3 minute long song feels twice that, and in a good way.
And in this way the song/album feels like the raw material of a type of rock music, some kind of natural resource, almost unfiltered but for the mix. Elemental and admirable.
Listening to new music you find that most songs are speaking in vague and grand generalities. Their subjects are love and death, to the extent they have them. By and large, the melody is the message.
Most songs are used as a platform to display the singer’s performative talents. And depending on your cultural conditioning you can grant them credulity or not.
“I was only calling / to talk to my brother”
This isn’t that. Mope Grooves’ Here comes another one appears to be a song about a relationship. And within that an interaction. And within that an instance.
Music is a tool. Whatever conditioning I have been subjected to and/or later sought out values lyricism including storytelling and texture.
And in minimalistic instances like this one, the gravity of limited phrasing amplifies its significance. All of this creates a small but highly detailed world, one possible to escape into, if you want, and is some real nice storytelling.
Pretty sure King of the Sea is rock and/or roll, though it’s seen in the wild so rarely that sometimes it is hard to recognize.
There are plenty of bands in possession of guitars and drums, and they even play them, if pressed. But not quite like this.
All the pretense is stripped, and under the guts of the track are exposed a bit. And still it staggers forward with a rawness and intensity, the energy (probably eternal, huh?) is unleashed.
Captivatingly and kindly, they’re playing to the pit.
Sleep Talk is not on bandcamp, unfortunately, and spotify only lets you embed a 20-second clip (?) but here’s their other stuff.
The Project is a golden and somewhat bloody haze of chamber surf. The tune is outfitted with much to admire: bells, whistles, but structurally it is also sound underneath.
Proudly pop, lest the textures fool you, the build into the chorus will convey and confirm your suspicions: all of this is meant to go together, and is precise with intention.
Artisans have built it and now it is to be admired. It’s a great structure of a beast.
In somewhat keeping with the aside, this is an instrumental track on an album that otherwise features exceptional vocal production and performances.
And within that context, after the also superb track Burned Body, Gentle Movement toward Sensual Liberation lands with the most wobbled grace and poise.
An enclave of singing synths deliver a kind of orchestral chamber pop, built around two well textured, extra-strength melodies.
Stamp is one of them joyous garage rock lamentations, end to end.
Everything down to the outro refrain and terminal exclamation are so well balanced and calibrated, it almost defies belief. The fuzz and fade are most agreeably punctuated by the lead guitars tremolo.
Disgust and disillusionment never sounded so kindly, even merry. Tom Waits enjoys “Beautiful melodies telling (him) terrible things,” and so do I.
It is Good.
Noun Verb Adjective has some wonderfully crafted lo-fi bedroom pop rock.
If you would believe it, Boys in the Sand does have some Beach Boys stylistic parallels. The hooks and layers of vocals carom over one another and the tambourine/snare provides a warm and welcoming hive to orbit.
A superb owl on the cover guides you home. It’s a good, small marvel.
Sickly strummed guitars and cooing, warbled vocals are good. This song has both. It also has the most minimalistic drum track you may have ever heard in which one remains technically present.
The sum of it’s parts are quietly a spectacle that is worth taking in.
It has all the energy and promise of that first demo draft of a melody and rough lyric, a stab taken on tape, to play back later to build upon, before the verses are nailed down and the chorus repeats, burdensomely, to warrant having taught it to the band in the first place.
At 74 seconds, It’s a non-invasive surgery. What do you have to lose.
A great, soundly built garage rock track, strumming and bashing about over the tapes sturdy hiss. When the organ arrives to accompany the chorus you know you’re in good hands for the remainder.
The vocal and audio peaking is skillfully used for intensity, never overstepping into painful or distracting but instead gracefully bracing itself off of this ceiling.
If I had five golden merles to give I would give it five golden merles.
Plainly & Painfully 