Tafai – Belly
A few years ago, while all the guitar boffins were complaining that nothing new was coming out of amps in concert halls around the world, something different did pop out of bedrooms across the U.S. It was a lazy, dazed sound employed for something music websites termed bedroom-pop. And, while difficult as hell to play on the old ix-string, it attracted little of the attention of lead-guitar demons who’ve mostly shifted their collective focus towards the fireworks of metal.
Tafai’s Belly is built on that foundation. A dainty, jazz-like riff, out of the Mac DeMarco playbook, acts as the tune’s main ammunition. A great groove and some lethargic vocals flesh-out the monochrome dreamscape of the tune.
Don’t let our comparisons put you off. Taifai hasn’t arrived late to the party at all. If anything he proves the sturdiness of this style, and how one can still get a newfangled sound on the back of a bedroom studio, and a few nifty ideas.
Almost August – Flies Have Conquered Flypaper
There are two kinds of American road music. One celebrates the fact that there are so many roads, so few laws, and endless freedoms. I think Sammy Hagar might have had a few tunes about that.
Then there are the songs about too many laws, the same roads, and the fact that they all lead to the same boring place. Small-town music has fewer fans than it should. It’s usually music that channels the slow-ache of slimly-packed localities.
I feel like Almost August perfectly encapsulates the latter, from the great artwork that displays a giant ice-cream cone sharing the skyline with the telephone wires, to the hushed, indie-rock sound of Flies Have Conquered Flypaper. The title of the song is a quote from John Steinbeck, a man who also wrote about the professedly endless space the world has to offer, and all the people who’d like to have it all to themselves. I predict that fans of 90s slacker rock will find this tune highly compelling.
