Ty Segall & Mikal Cronin “Reverse Shark Attack” LP
The 7″ these two creative Californian young adults collaborated on was full of energy and spunk and hinted at an up all night sleepover/recording sesh fueled by weed and candy bars. Super energetic and overflowing with ideas, but also a bit slapdash and half-ass. I enjoyed its carefeee spirit though, and was also a little wary of this already overly busy combo making a decent LP in their spare time. Mikal is already busy with Charlie & The Moonhearts and Okie Dokie and probably a few other things I’m unaware of, and we all know Ty releases records at a Melchior-like clip. The partnership works out well on this long player though, with the two of them playing and recording everything themselves. The first half-dozen tracks are originals that will satisfy any who are already fans of the modern surf/garage rock style these guys play in their other bands. Two slow stompers with heaps of echo and effects and a few speedier surf-rockers. Not too shabby at all, similar to the feel of ‘Lemons’, but with a heavier hand perhaps. It’s just what you’d expect up to this point, but then they reach up their sleeves and pull out their aces just when you think it might be getting redundant. Side A closes with a gonzo cover Floyd’s “Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk” which they thrillingly adapt to their Cali beach-punk approach without sacrificing any energy or momentum. Quite well done. This then sets the table for the flipside, the side-long title track. An expansive and enveloping suite (with the linking theme being that of love and losing it, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek goofball-psych fashion), “Reverse Shark Attack” is ten-plus minutes of Cronin and Segall throwing down just about every trick they have in their young repetoire. Heavy duty reverb abuse soaks the whole thing in waves, but it’s broken into individual bits of indie-punk, a Latin flavored surf theme (with a heavy Ventures nod), an underwater beach-pop segment, acoustic psychedelic folk moments and they even dip into some overblown horns and other fancy concept-record accoutrements. I give these lads heaps of credit for tackling something so ridiculously ambitious and making it work. Sure, they pull a boner here and there on this, and some of it is a bit half-baked, but there’s such an abundance of ideas you have to expect some slight missteps. They threw everything at the wall and even kept the parts that didn’t totally stick. Creative abandon aside, on the whole it’s surprisingly well thought-out and played (both of these guys have chops on the kit and the guit) genre exercising given a fresh look and an injection of adolescent and energetic bluster. They took a project that could’ve just been a throwaway and made it an attention grabbing listen and interesting step forward in the evolution of two exciting young songmakers with bright futures.(RK)
(Kill Shaman // http://www.killshaman.com)