Rocking Is Golden.
Richard In Your Mind - "Boat Is Rocking"
(3:24, 3.12mb)
myspace/triple J unearthed tracks, 2007.

Richard In Your Mind have left me with a smile on my face when I've seen them live. There's something infectious about their woozy brand of whimsical psychedelic pop explorations. Frontman Richard, in particular, has a nerdy charisma, willing you to join his world. They're the kind of band that would proclaim on their myspace that "If you look at your watch during a Richard In Your Mind show, you will notice that the numbers have disappeared leaving only the word NOW in their place". Which in a way, is true enough.

As far as I know, they unfortunately haven't properly released any CDs yet, but their songs are downloadable from the Triple J Unearthed pages, which they incidentally won the NSW heat of (or something like that). I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they rise up and become critical darlings of the blogosphere.

"Boat Is Rocking" is one of a few standout tracks. Like much of their work, it is a grab bag of bits and pieces from disparate genres, improbably lashed together. It starts with a satisfyingly out of tune acoustic guitar plonk, as if they have the blues. Richard raps out the lyrics, with a rhythm and style not a million miles from Beck's kind of thing. Lashings of tremeloey spaghetti Western guitar coexist with what sound like otherworldly harmonicas and other random psychedelic noises, over what's simply an awesome groove from the rhythm section. "Well starlight hangs down right into your blender/ When the fire breaks down you'll bring the bowser in to mend her" - As you can see, the lyrics don't make sense. But in music like this, it makes sense that they don't.

Somehow all these elements coalesce into a coherent mix which is original, insistent, well-arranged and really fucking catchy. Musically, think Mollusk era Ween, Mellow Gold Beck. But NOW.

America - "Golden"
(4:18, 8.36mb)
Track 4, Here And Now, 2007.

America - yes, they of the Horse With No Name - have just released a new album. It's produced by Adam Schlesinger of the Fountains of Wayne and James Iha (ex-Smashing Pumpkins, if you wondered what he was up to these days). A few entries ago, I talked about the current enthusiasm for bands (e.g., Josh Rouse, The Bees (U.S.), The Shins, Guster, Nada Surf) which resemble the soft rock of the 1970s. Appropriately, we now we have what may well be the ultimate purveyors 1970s soft rock deliberately trying to make this link explicit. America, on Here And Now, don't sound like a band that's been around for almost 40 years. It's partially the production, which is agreeable and shiny, but full of details (not that you'd expect anything different from Schlesinger). And it's partially their predilection on the album for covers of songs by modern songwriters; they do a version of "Always Love" by Nada Surf, and "Work To Do", written by Adam Schlesinger...it definitely sounds like its written by Schlesinger. But mostly, as the bonus disc of live versions of their classics makes very clear, it's just America being America.

"Golden", a cover of the My Morning Jacket song, is cleaner, more pristine than the original. More laidback, too; where My Morning Jacket's version sounds insistent and nervy, America have a lighter, more effortless touch. It's interesting to hear the song sung without the lashings of vocal reverb which My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James invariably smothers over his vocal parts on record. It loses a fair bit of the atmosphere without the vocal reverb, but it's clearer on America's version just how good a song it is.

tim.