Labels: Shorter Recordings
Review by: james pacanowski
It’s pretty difficult to review albums like this now. All the good words like ‘fuzzy’ and ‘swirling’ have been used up already, but it’s nigh on impossible to review stuff like this without using those words. So bear with me if you get a little deja vu reading this.
Anyway, this 13 track effort from these Garden State natives treads familiar territory for anyone who has been paying even the most minimal attention to the gaggle of lo-fi pop bands surfacing right now. Graham Repulski, admittedly, do not do a whole lot to separate themselves from the rest of this crowd. But they do also manage to leave a pleasant enough impression that it’s hard to resent them for it.
So the album flits between mumbly, miserly acousticesque strummers (Cherry Homes, Paradise Plank) that resemble Eric’s Trip at their least blown out and lazy pop tunes that jangle like Guided By Voices (Slopping About, Voice World) and even bring to mind The 6ths at some points, particularly on stand-out tracks ‘Good Motor, Revolution’ and ‘Valued Snakes’, the latter of which builds from woozy delay and droopy-eyed warbling into choppy guitar lines that climax as a buzzing, chirping mess of noise with Morricone-style coyote calls and is way more satisfying than I have probably made it sound (though it does cut out frustratingly suddenly, without really getting to reach any sort of conclusion). At times it sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete all those yonks ago. Get into it if you tell people that the only reason you like Clueless is because Velocity Girl is on the soundtrack.