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.
There are two excellent renditions of this song on No Silver / No Gold. The other is a better single, but the version included below from the end of the album is preferred.
“Has anybody seen my bag / it’s the one I put together for the leaving”
This is what folk/americana could be and should be known as: all the layers of grit, complexity, simplicity, and directness. A unique and passionate delivery, playful and apocalyptic.
And just the one long note on the organ, putting Iggy to shame; making him out to be an overachieving opportunist for all those additional percussive hammerings.
San Diego’s Teenage Burritos 2016 s/t has much good within it.
The standout tracks for me are Prom Song and the one rated here/posted below, Kamikaze. But the whole thing is so fluent in building convincing garage rock fragments that it appears effortless.
A real compelling alchemy of elements, dodging and compiling. I prefer this version featuring Andreas from Holograms to the other two listed on their bandcamp:
To my taste, Karl Neudert’s extremely prolific demos are better produced than anything I’ve ever mastered.
When the chorus/backing vocals kick in around the one minute mark something very good becomes revelatory and mercilessly catchy.
Seek out his hyper-active youtube channel for more radiant lo-fi hooks.
Dig Nitty, “Reverse of Mastery” was one of the best albums of 2020.
Screen is a bit more up-tempo than the majority of the album, but it all includes these inventive, careening vocal melodies drenched in the appropriate level of reverb. The drumming pattern in the chorus is expert and perfectly arranged.
Other standout tracks are the harpoon to the heart that is “Angel Calling,” and the highway hypnosis of “Palm Springs.” But it’s all very good.
Erin McGrath et al are writing excellent songs.
Please buy them.
This is some combination of gut and sucker punch. A brilliant French-Canadian garage rock tune that launches right out of the gate into several varied strong melodies. There are also some superb driving vocals and excellent jangly guitar production.
The strength of the melodies and production mean that the 90 second run-time is brief even by my standards. But this allows for borderline infinite replayability.
Plainly & Painfully 