A few years back, when I was living in Los Angeles, I bought a Fender Rhodes from a guy named JP, who lived in Hermosa Beach. It was sitting in a studio room in the garage of his mom's house along with a couple of broken pianos, another Rhodes, and random instruments all over the place. He helped me get it home with something he called his "wheelboard", which was exactly what it sounds like. A board with wheels.
He gave me a couple of CDs after my girlfriend and I forked over some cash for the piano. He sold me a bunch of other stuff later after we bought the Rhodes. He was on the phone a lot, and told me he was "always hustling". Later, I found out there were interviews saying that Dios funded their entire first record by selling bootleg copies of "Smile". JP told me they were touring with Grandaddy. That was a while back.
To tell you the truth, I only listened to the CDs a couple of times, but this new record reminds me a lot of Hermosa. They technically hail from Hawthorne and there are definite moments of Brian Wilson there, but there's no room for any circus-sounding rack toms or meandering beats - most of the drum sounds are very big, and I think I can hear some optigan samples (which he also sold me pirated copies of); it's a nice updated sound to vintage psychedelia. There's moments of The Beatles by way of The Minders, and the guitar that structures "Say Anything" says everything about influences from Elliott Smith. I don't know that that's anything to sneer at, especially since the hooks are nothing like Elliott Smith hooks, and it seems like they try pretty hard not to be heavy-handed at all.
I don't, maybe I'm square, but psychedelic music that constantly harps on about how much weed you smoke or slacking you do seems a little trite. But it's probably true, I'm a fucking square, and as far as lyrical content, I don't think anyone that isn't a truly amazing songwriter really needs to put much stock into words, it's almost as if you're just kind of giving up on that stuff since you want to put all the work into the actual instrumentation and melodies and killer drum tracks on the record. And since you're writing and recording music for a living, you do what works.
I found it pretty hard to figure out exactly what was going on with JP the first time I met him, and really, I don't know the guy, I just bought a bunch of stuff from him, but when I take a look at their website and match that up with the kind of guy he seemed like, it makes perfect sense. If you were just a kid and could write and record music about what kind of life you'd be living if you wrote and recorded music for a living, well, then this is exactly the record you'd come up with.
And I don't know how better to explain it than that - Old Field Recordings has some spectacular experimentation going on with panning and overdubbing and tons of different sounds and a steady bassline, just like Weezer's "Only in Dreams", only this is a very deliberately lazy and almost sloppy anthem. Makes me wish I was back in warm weather, at the beach, enjoying life like they sound like they do. |