It felt like I hadn’t had a
musical discovery, but this week I had a breakthrough with late eighties/early
nineties rapper Big Daddy Kane. I bought two of his albums on the weekend and I’m
looking forward to exploring his music even further.
This next album is a far cry from
rap, but it is another “new to me” album – a band I discovered last year but I’m
pretty excited about.
Disc 1091 is…Chinese Fountain
Artist: The
Growlers
Year of Release: 2014
What’s up with the Cover? Chinatown neon in all its
splendor! I don’t read Chinese but my guess would be that the characters in the
lower right spell out “Chinese Fountain.”
How I Came To Know It: Last year when Sheila and I were
planning our trip to San Francisco, I checked to see if there were any bands in
town we might want to see while we were there. Nobody I knew was playing, so I
started investigating the bands that were
playing. The Growlers stuck out immediately and I went to buy tickets but…all
three of their shows were sold out. I kept searching and ended up with the
Francis Luke Accord (reviewed back at Disc 1051).
While I
never got to see the Growlers live, I did get hooked on their sound, and bought
their new release “City Club” before we left for our trip anyway. I couldn’t
find “Chinese Fountain” until I went to Amoeba Records during our trip to San
Francisco, and there it was! There is some beautiful symmetry to that.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Growlers albums and if you’re
paying attention you know which two. Of those “Chinese Fountain” is the best.
Ratings: 4 stars
Listening to “Chinese Fountain” it was easy to see
why the Growlers have built an audience so loyal they sold out three straight
nights in San Francisco.
It is refreshing when a band can draw on multiple
musical influences and blend them into something new and powerful. The Growlers
are a blend of echoing surfer guitar, eighties Goth music with a pinch of sixties
doo wop and seventies disco thrown in for added flavour. Think Dick Dale
crossed with the Cure and you’ll be close. The band’s followers call this “Beach
Goth” and that’s as good a description as any.
Whatever you call it, “Chinese Fountain” is my favourite
of their albums. On it, the Growlers manage to mix the ‘warm bath’ quality of
surfer music with lilting melodies that add a nice swell and dip to the ride. You
can take this album lying down, floating in the ambience, or you can catch the
wave and aggressively ride the tune into shore. Either way, you’ll have a good
time.
Singer Brooks Nielsen’s vocals have a bit of a 60s
crooner quality, with a head voice that has a lot of natural resonance and
verve. It feels skeevy and romantic in equal measure. The crooner elements are
so pronounced that on “Rare Hearts” I
had to check the liner notes to be sure it wasn’t a cover (n.b. – it wasn’t:
all the tracks on “Chinese Fountain” are Growlers originals).
When the band gets their surf guitar going it is equally
compelling. On “Going Gets Tough” the
tone of Matt Taylor’s guitar is rich and relaxed. His playing is sublime; a
combination of laid back seemingly-effortless groove with a restless energy
lurking in the background. The tunes are well structured and give equal billing
to everyone in the band, letting you focus in on bass, vocals, drums or guitar
with equal ease, although you’ll want to give Taylor’s careless brilliance
special attention.
Into this mix of updated surfer rock, “Chinese
Fountain” throws in a dark romanticism that reminds you of the Cure. There is
an ambient, echoing quality to the sound, with lyrics that are dark and heart-worn.
Then, when you think you’ve got their sound
categorized in your mind, along comes the title track, which feels like Blondie
in their disco phase, blending dance club beats and New Wave jump. This song is
catchy as hell and ought to have been a hit in any sane world. Sadly, when it
comes to hit making the world is far from sane. The song is a dystopian view of
the music industry, a song that borrows what has come before, while acknowledging
there is an inherent emptiness in that process:
“We are the miners
of another generation
Hills scraped dry
with no choice but be creative
Everybody’s sick
and tired of waiting
Couldn’t get any
harder to be patient
Is techno so shitty
even disco seems punk
Like the water so
filthy it’s no wonder why we’re drunk.”
Rarely is hipsterism so self-aware of its own
faults, and the clever recognition that they have made a disco beat dangerous,
and wondering – at their own expense – if it was all worth it. When you make a
song this good, all is forgiven. And to answer your question, Growlers, yes –
techno is that shitty.
What isn’t shitty is “Chinese Fountain” which is an
atmospheric groove-fest that shows that there is still gold in the hills around
San Francisco, if you’re willing to apply new treatments to find it.
Best
tracks: Big Toe,
Black Memories, Chinese Fountain, Going Gets Tough, Love Test, Not the Man
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