Magic Trick - The Glad Birth of Love on Empty Cellar Records

The thing about Tim Cohen, and this goes for any number of his side projects, is just how plain likeable it is musically. Take anything he’s done either on his numerous solo albums or his work with The Fresh and Onlys and he’s consistently able to pull of a huge array of ‘60s influenced psych, with bubbling pop leanings without feeling like he’s repeating himself or pulling directly from the genre. He’s been drawing what is essentially a straight line from ‘60s psych through to contemporary sounding garage, virtually channelling this period effortlessly every time. The Glad Book of Love is no exception, but here under the Magic Trick moniker, the tracks take the time to get majestic, expanding on the verse/chorus pop psych into two massive tracks per side, exploring the longer form of dreamy pop.
Tim doesn’t need much to get to that dense, mythical place and “Cherished One” is mostly full of quiet instrumentation from an acoustic and is impressively minimal. Lyrically, he’s exploring a conceptual place with an incredibly complex narrative in some completely unfamiliar fantasy world like Fantastic Planet a creepy, slightly unsettling place full of gardens and queens, delivered in a loose airy harmony and that romanticised ‘70s Sunday afternoon feel. It’s been years of absorbing those records, he’s done all the work for you. Ghosts sing choruses with the warbles of saws. There’s even a heavy Sitar improv clearly placing this in that psych landscape, as if the length wasn’t doing it. “Daylight Moon” has a ringing chorus’d out guitar and a choir of backup singers la la la-ing around that watery guitar completely roaming. Eventually the whole thing catches up with itself, waking out of it’s hazy slumber to coalesce into a big measured rock breakdown. For as much as these parts spread out for a minute they’re never jammed out into oblivion and quickly get reined back in line for the strict psych-out.
You get the sense he’s really enjoying the ability to experiment in all of these directions, committing every direction to vinyl like this... he’s certainly thriving on it with no end to his output.
But you can’t discount the contributions from San Francisco contemporaries here, John Dwyer from the Oh Sees on flute (!), Grace Cooper from the Sandwitches on ‘angelic’ vocal duties and Diego Gonzalez working with all of the non traditional instrumentation on the Oud and Tamboura, adding up to new layers and giving the sound more of a freedom to meander and explore a particular groove.

Magic Trick is building dense, towering structures of instrumentation and vocals along with an underlying melodies that function as an anchoring foundation... thankfully never veering into that experimental free form spaghetti to decipher. In fact to hold this together in the delicate balance of catchy pop and drone repetition for 14 minutes is an achievement. I want to imagine Tim and Co. have this all mapped out Brian Wilson style on great blackboards and archaic scrawling pictograms of changes...to it’s credit it’s never improvisational but moving forward in it’s own secret narrative across both sides. A long journey that Magic Trick have destined you take on full length vinyl.

This heavy cardstock thick sleeve is the perfect case for the massive gram vinyl inside and glossy painting foldout insert with lyrics and a gentleman performing an act of magic... pulling a rabbit out of a hat. On Empty Cellar Records.

The two sides of Tim Cohen on Empty Cellar Records

I swear this Tim Cohen full length from Empty Cellar and Secret Seven Records has been on my turntable the past two weeks, off and on, but I keep coming back to it. It's a huge departure from his other project, The Fresh and Onlys, but like the Jeff Novak solo full length I am totally convinced that he's a huge talent that's going to take his solid songwriting ideas to whatever genre he ends up in... garage pop punk or this more intimate solo beautifully arranged masterpiece. If you remember Arvel from Empty Cellar clued me into this during our interview and I was really expecting some kind of Ty Segall distorted blues one man blowout, and this is completely in the other direction.
It's essentially a pretty quiet record, he's arranging subtle all over the place pretty minimally and switches from muted drum machine beats to heavily delayed acoustic guitar with hints of organ melody. It's completely restrained, distilled down to the essential parts. They are a collection of exceptional songs, not necessarily cohesive as a whole piece, but then again that's what I love, it keeps switching directions all within this subtle quiet framework. It's meant to be loud in complete silence, and keeps being so rewarding...immediately. Completely unexpected.
The first track 'Amazing Visions' is an acoustic piece with layered whispered vocals. All kinds of animal imagery, that sort of hallucinogenic folk. On 'Haunted Hymns' he's using all kinds of subtle effects; call and answer lyrics, but it never relies on those weird distinctive sounds or emotive vocals, it's a slow descent into pure songwriting, grounded in great melody and lyrics to come back to. 'Burn My Martyr', the last song on the A-Side even has this early Police feel, practically new wave, really sparse guitar instrumentation, kind of dark vocals, and it actually picks up to become slightly pop at one point. Vocally it's distant and unemotive in those moments Sting isn't trying so hard. It's all about the clean bassline and this cold new wave feel...it's one of my favorites, but really we'd have to be talking about a collection of unreleased singles or something from some length of time...not this package recorded last year in San Francisco(?).
'Open up the sky' on the B-Side has Chad Vangaalen written all over it to me, a lot of these do now that I think about it. His neo-folk style, combined with anti-human elements, drum machines, synth, but warped and muted out to fit this dreamlike journey... the slow deliberate machine beat with subtle synth and his layered falsetto vocals. Add a hint of beach boys type harmony and their multitrack experimentation, and he just keeps delivering these solid, really imaginative songs that stick in your head.
'I swear to God' uses his typical 4/4/ kick metronome beat with sleigh bells. Piano chords march right along with the hits, the vocals are always quiet, even contemplative, delivered just warbly enough and feeling but again, and I keep going back to this, the melodies are just so brilliant. A few other songs take that marching piano chord style, it's almost 60's pop, like Jeff Novak, it's taking that upbeat formula and making it sound damn good...and god forbid... on 'Burden of Being' he even takes everything away to just sing along with an acoustic guitar on a haunting completely sad track...that takes some balls not to drown it in effects..he's just that good my friend.
The sleeve and inserts for this are top notch...it's a heavy matte stock sleeve. The drawings, I'm assuming they're his, are great trippy doodles, on the back they're reproduced on that yellow legal ruled paper...really nice. The cardstock insert has another drawing and typewritten lyrics and thanks to every great label.
Insound's still got it...as well as aquarius I'm told, or try hitting up Empty Cellar direct, Arvel did mention on the interview I did with him this is going to be repressed...so get in line.

Interview with Arvel from Empty Cellar Records

As promised here's an interview I did with Arvel from Empty Cellar Records...Part 1. Episode 60. 27min. Immediately after part one you can hear the Joseph Childress side of the 7" single.
We talked about how The Endless Nest collective started, what Empty Cellar has been up to so far, the recording process with the Joseph Childress and The White White Quilt single, and what releases they have coming up.
Arvel started out booking shows, including The Indian Summer Music Festival and working with people like Wymond Miles from The Fresh and Onlys who had a studio and another friend The American Opry who documented the festival and finally they decided to take all these elements and put them together under one roof and start a label.
This all came together around 5 months ago, with the help of all the members of the label and collective and has been quickly gaining momentum with releases like the sold out Tim Cohen of the Fresh and Onlys solo album and The Dry Spells.
Empty Cellar loves the vinyl and has collaborated with other labels in making sure these pressed. I love what they have done so far, and what they are trying to do as a self contained collective to release music they believe in.
They have an upcoming EP release from The Sandwitches, Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper who sang on the Fresh and Onlys records, and have a repress already planned for the Tim Cohen record as well, so email the label to reserve one of the second (and last) pressings.
Amazing things are afoot in California, from the empty watertowers down to the handcrafted labels. Go pick up the single or their full length releases at their store.