The Answer Is In The Beat

Saturday Looks Good To Me: One Kiss Ends It All (Polyvinyl, 2013) + Forever/Inside tape (Life Like, 2013)

May 18, 2013 at 6:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Local heroes SLGTM return to Polyvinyl and to their early-mid ’00s sound; multiple singers, heavy Motown and Northern Soul influence, and tape-damaged lo-fi production. Except it’s a bit more hi-fi this time around, with a drum machine on first single “Sunglasses” and touches of modern indie-pop production throughout (the relaxed tempo and hazey synths of 8). Very subtle and layered production, plenty of hidden voices, some Arthur Russell textures, some spacey interludes. But most of all, it has the exact type of catchy, instantly memorable songcraft of all the other SLGTM albums. Betty Marie Barnes returns on two tracks (“Negative Space” and “The Everpresent New Times Condition”), Amber from Swimsuit and Damned Dogs is on a bunch of tracks, Autumn from Bad Indians and Rebel Kind sings on “Empty Beach”, and new vocalist and violinist Carol Catherine is all over the album. Also, the NOMO horns return on a few tracks, which is welcome. Basically, it’s another classic SLGTM album, and it’s arriving at the perfect time, right as it’s starting to feel like summer.

Also just released is a new tape on Life Like, the latest in a long stream of mostly tour-only CDRs and tapes of demos and outtakes and rehearsals that SLGTM has been releasing since the beginning. This one’s particularly muddy, demo-ey and collage-like. Lots of brief snippets of tracks from the new album, 2 Velvet Underground covers, a few oldies, and a “screwed” version of “Sunglasses”, which slows the song down, adds heavy glitching, and tons of spacey effects. It’s completely overwhelming. It’s also the longest song on the tape, at just over 3 minutes. Everything else is usually just a short, abruptly cut off fragment, and it all runs together in a delicious mess.