I Like All This Stuff! Part # 2

Super Vacations

Definitely one of the more ambitious and mysterioso bands of this run-down, Super Vacations provide a perfect example of a group turning the limitations of home-recording to their advantage, assembling a beguiling psyche-rock sound from the palette of slightly warped rock n’ pop elements at their disposal. Their debut album burns through sixteen songs in about twenty five minutes, each of them a swirling wonder of crisply recorded hi-hat n’ snare grooves, twangin’, FX heavy surf guitar, hazy layers of psychedelic jangle, occasional bursts of chaotic space-fuzz washout and ultra-compressed vocal tracks that range from pristine, chanted harmonies to distorted answering machine skree.

Recalling the spirit of classic-era Guided By Voices records, these one-to-two minutes cuts are veritable bonsai trees of weird beauty that make their point and then disappear into the void, providing tantalising glimpses into what we assume to be a whole universe of unguessed at four-track wonderment. Inevitably, Super Vacations’ songwriting is sketchy and indistinct in comparison to the heights scaled on a daily basis by Ohio’s finest in the mid-‘90s, but nonetheless, they’ve got a good handle on the kind of sound they’re going for, and the material at hand is up to the task, allowing them to stand proud alongside the very best of the ‘90s neo-psych-pop mob (Lilies, The Swirlies, pre-ego meltdown Brain Jonestown Massacre etc.) without ever having to venture beyond their basement. (I'd like to think this band's stuff was recorded in a basement. It... has that kinda feel to it. I'd be disillusioned to discover actual sunlight was involved at any stage.)

Then, about halfway through the album they seem to get bored of all the dreamy, haunted psyche and throw down some of the truly groovin’ surf instrumentals that the lead guitar & drums have been hinting at throughout, sidestepping the pitfalls of redundant Dick Dale pastiche and instead recalling garage-racket oddities like The Nick & The Jaguars’ “Ichi-Bon No#1”, with a gleeful mix of rough-hewn rockin’ and out-of-control tremolo, and a lovely sense of Ventures-esque melodic purpose. Fab gear!

Add a propensity for “let’s turn this fader all the way up and see what happens” type mixing desk experiments and more alien-planet reverb than the devil’s own bathtub, and Super Vacations start to sound eerily like they're channelling the last cloud of psychic detritus to escape through Joe Meek’s fireplace before the forces of darkness closed in. One of the most beguiling and effortlessly enjoyable albums I’ve heard since…. hang on, what year is it again…? No way, you're kidding me!

http://www.myspace.com/meetthevacations


Brilliant Colors

Pushed by the strange whims of the interweb from first-on-the-bill anonymity to next-big-thing notoriety within – literally - a couple of weeks, here’s San Francisco’s Brilliant Colors for ya, with two 7”s and a handful of shows under their belt. Everett True says “I have a New New Favourite Band – OFFICIAL”. Doug Mosurock says band leader Jess Scott has “Rose Melberg’s sing-songy voice, the guitar skills of a beginner, and only a haphazard idea of how to write memorable songs”. What do you say? I say that they sound pretty much like the generic Band I’d Probably Like. Sweet, minimal, energetic, fuzzy, girly punk rock with a venerable K Records kinda shambletopia edge to it, no more no less. Wearing shades, drinking gin & lemonade and breaking amps from here to eternity. And to hate on ‘em for that would be like hating on The Alarm Clocks cos they didn’t write “Forever Changes” or turn into The Magic Band. Plus, “Should I Tell You” off their EP is sweet as sin, and probably twice as healthy – a readymade classic. Sometime in the future, there’ll be a blockbusting Nuggets-style compendium chronicling the current era, and Brilliant Colors will be present and correct whilst Grizzly Bear or whoever are gathering dust in some digital bargain bin, so fuck art, let’s rock.

http://www.myspace.com/brilliantcolorssanfrancisco


The Cave Weddings

I’ll admit, I just discovered these guys last week, following a link from Trev’s Oddbox blog. They’re… I mean…. uh… I just love ‘em. I guess these little band write-ups probably haven’t been amongst the more incisive critical broadsides you’ve read from the online music community recently, and, um, here’s where words fail altogether I guess. Like so many of these bands I like, these guys are just playing good-natured modern day garage rock, and why not? Done this well, it never gets old for me. Their song “The Last Time” is so good I nearly cried. They’ve got two guitars and no bass, and they’ve got “bah bah bah”s, and kick-ass little lead riffs and their songs are sad and funny, and…. well, they’re called THE CAVE WEDDINGS, for goodness sake! They are the sound of all things being right with the world. It’s enough to make me wanna get married in a cave. I’ll marry the coloured vinyl version of their 7” single, because it’s so darn pretty and unobtainable, and they can provide the soundtrack, and everyone will dance and cry.

http://www.myspace.com/thecaveweddings


Jungle Fever

Another super-fresh discovery, I found these guys – or perhaps ‘this girl’, I guess – when I was searching for stuff by Wild Weekend, San Diego’s all-girl tribute to one of my favourite punk bands of all times (and one of yours too by the time you’ve watched the linked video), The Zeros. Sadly, Wild Weekend have split up, presumably due to the world not being awesome enough to accommodate a concept such as theirs for long, but Kelly from the band is rocking solo (I think) as Jungle Fever, and her singing/fuzz guitar/drum machine tunes are making me even more happy than listening to the Zeros retrospective CD on Bomp for the 578th time. The overall effect is akin to a cleaner, friendlier Dum Dum Girls, with some great, wry, snarling Girls in the Garage inspired pop-punk nuggets standing in for all the shoegazery. Totally, totally super-wonderful stuff throughout… I think “I Won’t Tell You Wife” is the greatest song I’ve heard all week, and I’ve heard a fuckload of songs this week. “Little Yoko” and “Two Zero One Two” are second and third best. The latter is a particularly lovely number based on the good old Mayan calender end - a bittersweet ode to sitting alone for want of someone to kiss as the world explodes. Swoon. So, uh, yeah, personally I might have set the drum a few BPMs higher in places on these, but such a complaint is petty in the extreme in the face of such perfection.

http://www.myspace.com/junglefeverxo

Labels: Brilliant Colors, I like, Jungle Fever, Super Vacations, The Cave Weddings, The Zeros