Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Dimples on Holy Smoke Recordings


I don't know how I ended up with this latest from Dimples on Holy Smoke Recordings except that I remember writing about their previous single from Mexican Summer not that long ago...a rather ridiculous post attempting to combine another artist who went by the name "Dimples" back in the '80s, who my friend Travis brought to my attention many years ago. These guys aren't related at all, but I think a lot of those early impressions of that Mexican summer release sound like this new Dimples hasn't missed a beat, they're still after this tough, slicker than garage goofball sound, that's taking itself pretty seriously in a great way.

"Boundless Love" has this chorus guitar effect that strums in like "Jumping someone else's train", I hear it every time, but instead of Sean Penn...I mean Robert Smith you get this tough guy singing about the road...he never wanted to be put in this position, mayor of the night. Beggars are asking kings questions...how can they get away with this? it's like Ween in it's crazy sincerity, throwing themselves right on the rock genre. Into the vortex of motorcycles and machine guns. It's really freaking catchy and maybe it's the exact right set of lyrics that just had to go with this rough and tumble riff. It writes itself when you come up with this biker garage jam. It's not parody, just digesting all these rock tropes coming up with riding on the back of his superbike. I can see this sort of related to The Johnny Ill band or The Zoltars... the almost deadpan style, with a wink. Throw in some emotional synth and a soaring phasery solo for good measure. Explore this almost stereotype idea of a 'boundless love' like some Bryan Adams sentiment and play it for all it's worth. Beating the dead horse like the wild west days. That reminds me, is this a drum machine? It's so mechanical, those snare hits are machine gunned in there...like their turning this into almost a Dirty Beaches, Mattress or Suicide kind of vibe...a mutated future, with a hologram tough guy.
B-Side "Halogen Credenzas (live)" is a real slow jam with big room drum hits bouncing all over the hollow space. This is a great sound for his baritone toughness and their mellow side of slow tremolo and really seducing with these vocals. It blows up for a second and then quietly works a saxaphone in? There's hi-hat splashes, a jazzy undertone alongside the subtle horn section. Great capture of every string all the way to rock the hell out of this last chorus, blasting that title lyric. It's epic and maybe getting further into Ween territory for me, without the changing genres, just adopting this persona from another decade and really inhabiting it...a single song turning apocolyptic and abstract. A massively long track that got all the ultra quiet moodyness of this one and the crisp blown out live energy of a real performance? At this point who knows with this guy, he's keeping me guessing...like this sweet video, which totally changed the song for me, I don't think I realized the absurd comedy here until now. I'm half questioning if this is even the actual band here in the video? That would take this to another level.

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