I'm late to these guys. They started doing what they do six years back. Over the last few days I've immersed myself in their albums, making up for lost time. Loth tho' I be to deprivate a living band from scraping moolah, the usual overload download is absent from this piece, just a sample, and I do encourage you to buy if you like and gots cabbage; or do what I did if you don't.
They're the first new band for a long while to have made the crucial synaptic connection. I wish this was, say, '74, and they'd just picked up a Warner Bros contract and were going into the studio with Ted Templeman. Casting that aside, what do they gots that we need? Guitars, mainly, and none of that strummed placeholder indie band approach. These peoples can play. Songs. Nothing immediately pop hit material, but real songs, sung well enough, with lyrics that don't strike me as dumb after a few hearings.
Television, the band, have been evoked as an influence, and the Dead, and you get sporadic references to both in the dual guitar arrangements and stop-start structure and dynamic build. No trace of the Undies malign influence, praise be. But what marks them out and rewards the listener is their ability to think as well as play - to listen to each other, to shift gear at the exact moment it's needed. And to draw you in with them. This stuff involves.
So yeah, Garcia Peoples get that rarest of accolades - the Isle O'Foam© Hygenic Home Listening Award™. They're at bandcamp, and the usual places. Like, digsville!
ReplyDeleteStealth Link ...
OMG....The Isle O'Foam© Hygenic Home Listening Award™! I don't have buckets o' ducats so must do what you did. Still in the cow pasture. The AQI finally says you can breathe outside and what's do we get....blown head gasket in the van. The RV's OK but must have the other vehicle for the kiddo's school work, groceries and the never ending bottles and cans I seem to go through since this started. Ciggies too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for these treasures!
There's still some fine music being made out there, just not anything most people are likely to stumble across. Chris Forsyth is another great psychedelic explorer and he recently collaborated with these hippies but has his own deep catalog as well. Aquarium Drunkard and Doom & Gloom From the Tomb are two other indispensable blogs covering a wide range of mostly under the radar, quality, music both old and new. Thanks for spreading the good word!!
ReplyDeleteI second that recommendation:
Deletehttps://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/
Hey, thanks for this - I've listened (on a streaming platform) and I like. I also like that you recommend funding their music rather than giving it away. Well done you!
ReplyDeleteFollowing the same principle you will be thrilled to hear that - as a result of your enthusiastic support on this very blog - I have purchased, with used notes, 2 LPs by The Explorers Club and 2 LPs by Green Seagull. I commend them all to your small and grubby but charmingly loyal band of followers.
Keep it up!
Cheers, Peanuts Molloy.