Ducktails live on WFMU on Inflated Records

The guys over at Inflated Records were kind enough to send this Ducktails live full length over the other day. I had heard Matt did a live appearance over there, probably even a couple of them by now, but didn't know it was pressed on sweet 12" yellow vinyl.

On the A-Side, it's great to hear Matt introduce, "Backyard" and the band and then get right to the warbling, slow burn. A shaker comes in and that main melody is joined by another slightly reverbed electric. Somehow, this interpretation of a backyard feels universal, I'm always picturing this fall sundown scene, just finished mowing the grass, and it's finally quiet. Taking all this time to manicure this weird suburban version of nature. It's taming is comforting and at the same time Ducktails evokes a sunny '70s Sunday feel, like a faded hipstamatic print where I know it's been filtered and manipulated to seem old, but still you get some kind of jaded emotional response to the off colors and faded edges.

The thing about Ducktails, and seeing Matt recreate this material live, is not the amount of pedals and blinking lights on the floor in front of him, but that at the end of the day, he's a great guitarist capable of switching around all kinds of styles and moods. You could imagine "Beach Point Pleasant", off his first single by the way, coming out of finding that great disintegration loop-like sample one night an playing for hours. The odd rollercoaster, circular rhythm that Matt plays a wah wah type shimmery phaser melody over this hypnotizing structure. The great thing I keep forgetting about this recording is that it's live and he's really improvising these pieces in new ways. His guitar playing is always loose and lends itself to this kind of great reinterpretation every performance. It's easy to get lost here, and completely forget about where this track has been, the gradual shifting of sounds always end up far from where it began.
Finally, "The Mall" and here Matt introduces the band and the station for this vocal track. Counting off and immediately launching into his delivery which is as loose as his guitar playing, fitting this easy vibe describing the moon and the ocean. Vocally it's like a fading memory, the details coming in waves, but you can't really make sense of them in any kind of narrative. A barely understood dream and it's surprisingly brief for a band that seems to be most at home wandering off the trail and forging a new path. At the end of this side Matt introduces the B-side Real Estate track, "Let's Rock the Beach" and hearing a myspace address on vinyl never gets old.

The B-Side continues with Matt remarking, "I'm going to have to tune my guitar" while the beat is called up. The guitar is back to it's fading in and out, hard to grasp slow wah. I love this contradiction in the song title and the laid back, canned bossanova rhythm and the mellow organ underneath. It's not the massive waves, reverb surf rock of the west coast, it's the consistent rolling, slow crashes of a calm northeast seaside. This is a dockers, boat shoe vision of rocking the beach...white shorts and grass on the dunes.
This track nicely devolves into organ drones and wood percussion free jazz. A heavy video game electronic sound gradually rises and fades and I equate Ducktails with Cory Archangel for some reason, maybe it has that sensibility I love in Corys artwork, the engagement with pop culture in weird subversive ways. Awknowledging those ridiculous inescapable influences and spinning gold out of this pop junkyard. Ducktails is working with the same basic tools.
Sounds like there's a track break and they round out this record with a lengthy track, "Surf's up" off his self titled record from Not Not Fun. The synth sounds are dominant on this one, creating their own kind of revolving loop. Another synth sound drones away, bent and sliding into a middle eastern strange scale effect which gradually grows and becomes more and more the headline of the piece, a pile of effects jettisoning it way out to space. The whole time keeping that improvised jam feel to the otherworldly sound, it's a space jam this time, another planet beach, and early electronic pioneers would be proud to hear Ducktails take on this just out of reach future. The electronics keep multiplying and harshly swirling into the track, a blend of keyboard and possibly guitar? It's nice to not even know or care, it's a ride I keep willingly wanting to take over and over.

You can go check out this set, here from Free Albums Galore and then order the vinyl from Inflated Records.

Oberhofer on Inflated Records

This sleeve is insanely deceptive. This thrift store painting of a mountain? Must be somewhere in Washington? That would make sense...all of the info I can find on these guys leads back to Tacoma, WA...and then the reverse is an old sepia tinted pic of a circus ring of a thousand model T's. They're haunting, slightly mysterious ambiguous pics...I was imagining sparse acoustic tracks, nothing like this incredibly dense weirdo fractured pop from the last named band, from Bradely Oberhofer.

"Away Frm U" on the A-Side goes for a fingerpicked low reverb sound like those Real Estate slow burns until a booming tom comes in with off the wall untraditional vocals against a toy xylophone. Not that it's easy to pick apart these layers.
There's no faking that honest sound of a rehearsal room...or just the untreated recording room that the band finds itself in. I think that functions today the way the home recorded sound of the late '90s signified immediately the pure songcraft and anti-commercial movement of the time. This raw, playing together sound of Oberhofer on this side says, maybe you heard I started in a bedroom, but I can kick out the jams with a bunch of friends with the same care and energy. I also know now I can look forward to seeing this live because here's the proof...unlike the Cloud Nothings....maybe between having to play live and moving away from the layered mess of a home studio, they just lost a lot being reinterpreted live. Or when Blank Dogs played the Music Hall once, not one song sounded anything off of any album. I want an artist to evolve, but it's also confusing to sound like any old rock band, sans trademark analog archaic synth.
This track here ends with some weirdo feedback as if you weren't positive already they will consider any sound and this crazy experimentation is going to lead right into a full length. I love that they went for that text message title too. Alt Buzzworthy etc.

"Dead Girls Dance" on the B-Side.
I really had to check the credits of this to see if it is, in fact, some related side project to Animal Collective. Before I can even officially find out I'm blown away by hearing any project so closely resembling the creative philosophy of AC. The vocalizations, the unnerving polyrhythms, the explosive bursts of melody....it's uncanny.
The melodies are unfamiliar. How they're arriving at the same cacophonous solution s AC is impressive. It's clearly not riding the coattails of that sound, if that were even remotely possible, instead they come to the same conclusions in this primal blend of traditional rhythms and experimental noise. I wouldn't make that caparison lightly, they are completely out there on their own and how this is in the same neighborhood is unbelievable.
This one sounds so far to be in the experimental stage of Here Comes the Indian but with that frantic pop insanity of Strawberry Jam. I know this is going to immediately turn people off, but maybe for others it'll get them to take a chance on picking this up.
Those embedded rhythms weaves in and out of one another with a melodic understated guitar. It all comes in together in a brief refrain to punch away, hit after hit and then repeat the opening at an even faster speed, between the layers of different vocal harmonies that skip the catchy measure by measure melody to work on a greater scale. These patterns can only be heard from above.

It's really impressive forward looking debut from these guys. As much as I want to peg them to that AC sound after listening to the A-Side again, I know it's only one side (pun intended) of the story here, A happy coincidence of super talent.

Go pick this up from Inflated Records, who also have a great Ducktails 12" on WFMU that I'll be reviewing in the near future as well as another single from this wunderkind.

Bass Drum of Death - GB City on Inflated Records

Inflated Records sent me this album, and it turned out to easily be one of the contenders for best album of 2011...easily.
If you love and or appreciate punchy, dirty, garage recorded in the bowels of a rapidly sinking metal room of a ship, this one is for you.
More elaborate description over here.

Live: Bass Drum of Death at Pianos 1-19-11

Thanks to the latest communication technology (the twitter acct, what can I say? We're slow to change in the 7" vinyl offices), I was reminded that the great John Barrett was going to be playing last night at Pianos.
I've had his advance full length from Inflated Records in rotation for the past couple of days, so the garage-punk gods deux ex machina-ed me at just the right time.

John Barrett and his drummer were convincing from the first note, sticks flying, killing the drum kit, with John, a lanky Thurston Moore - played the hell out of his recent album of punk pop. It reminded me of the first time I saw Cheap Time, they happened to be on the bill with the Crystal Stilts, and like every good band they blindside you, taking advantage of the opening slot and the crowd to be completely mind blowing. I knew what to expect and I'm sure that would have happened. I don't know how old John is, but let's just say he's got a ridiculous amount of time left to keep writing and reinterpreting this genre. Those singles from Fat Possum and Play Pinball were just the beginning, this full length, next month is going to be impressive. I'd hold it up to Home Blitz's Out of Phase and Artificial Clouds from Bare Wires as a classic touchstone for the genre. An example of everything done exactly right, you couldn't say beforehand what those things exactly are, but simply put together in this way, it's right. Two amps on folding chairs, a couple of pedals, lots of that wet reverb and the rest comes from bad ass talent.
Like Ty Segall, the melodies are classic garage punk, which is increasingly becoming a crowded field and John can easily alongside all these references.

But forget all these pointless words and just listen.
You'll have to crank it and forgive my pathetic ipod mic, I'm no nyctaper, but after relistening to this last night, you only have to hear two minutes of this to be banging on Inflated's door.

Bass Drum of Death on play pinball records

I talked to John Barrett in the middle of his last tour last summer, just after his single came out on Fat Possum Records.
I don't know how I came across his latest on Play Pinball Records, but I wanted to make sure no one missed out on Bass Drum Of Deaths's punk-pop garage jams and then I found out also a full length will be coming soon from Inflated Records in about a month or so.
I happen to have heard said full length in fact and it's been really helping my rock out long walks through the unshoveled sidewalks to the train.

Bass Drum of Death has really honed this fuzzy as hell, dirty sound into a super loud layers of bluesy string bending. John keeps it deceptively simple, and let's face it, this attitude demands everything from the rhythm, not the melody. You should be able to play 2 or 3 notes and kick the ass out of a song...there's no doubt John is capable of exactly that on the track "Get Found" on this single. I love that these drums are super overblown in the mix, but it's not unlistenably distorted...it stays pretty clean, and just barley contained. Like Ty Segall, the sheer level of sound both of these guys are able to coax out of a track is seriously impressive. I'm definitely picking this up and looking forward to getting a full length and it living on the shelf right next to Ty, Cheap Time, and Jay.
All balls.

Get it from Play Pinball Records, who don't have many copies left. You will regret definitely regret it.

The second single from Oxford Mississippi's "Bass Drum Of Death" and it is a monster. Three of our favorite tracks of the year are on it. "Get Found" could start a revolution. Righteous punk/garage rockers with a slight stoner vibe with members of The Unwed Teenage Mothers, Flight and The Sleepwalkers. Pressed by Baby Don't Records in Nashville, TN.

Memoryhouse on Inflated Records

I came across this single after an email from WFMU that mentioned Inflated Records and their Ducktails live appearance on WFMU 12" vinyl. Turns out they released one other record and it's this one from Memoryhouse, a second pressing on blue vinyl no less, so I had to check out these guys who were in good company.
It seems that Memoryhouse is a duo collaboration between Denise and Evan who also take alot of polaroids, and release huge scope art books with LP accompaniment. They're the kind of collaboration that straddles a lot of mediums, all of them dreamlike and fleeting. Polaroids are a great tangible representation of this track 'Lately (Deuxième)'. The samples can't be placed, the delay is applied to warbling source instrumentals, and Denise's vocals are a layered chorus in the style of The Spinanes or Lush. I'm surprised there is an edit of this track that will actually fit on a seven inch. They're in no hurry to find a hook, or make it to the next chorus. It would go on a sleepy Sunday mix next to Deerhunter, Chairlift and A Sunny Day in Glasgow.
Now that I'm hearing it, there's practically no percussion and then...OH SHIT, it's like the Softies...of course! That echo on the vocals, the delivery is even the same....so is this twee? Not really, I guess it's chillwave? I don't know what the fuck that is.
It's mellow, they keep it brief, and she's got a great voice. It's too bad it's going to be easy fodder for remixes like the B-Side. There's nothing worse to me than taking these laid back sunset jams and slapping on a rave beat, or cutting up the lyrics, add some block rocking beats to the gentle airness of the originals. Oh well.

A. Lately (Deuxième)

B. Lately (Teengirl Fantasy Natural Mix)

Get it from Inflated Records....you want the Ducktails thing anyway...it's related.