It starts with the artwork which is where all great records (used to) start remark the colors the light the exact LA light the cacti graffiti light and the hazy sun kissed underwaterness of a beachy silverlake afternoon and the view of downtown LA and the way the light alights upon the artist’s hair the album art starts by taking you there and tells you this is a classic LA record at once choked by mystic orange purple smog and beautifully breathing Jeff Merchant has made a record that would have changed his life had he heard it when he was 17 (which is the real reason why you do this, right?: to make records that would have changed your life?)…but they weren’t making records like this when he was 17 and it is also a quintessentially LA record cuz it sounds like the floating blue bus of time’s humid glowing lazy rhythms flowing from the desert to the sea this record took it’s time to be and time to create cuz that’s the one thing besides great Mexican food and sun-baked depression that LA always seemed to have more than enough of: Time and this epic 72 degree dream of an album has that baroque siesta “let’s take our time and do this righteously wrong†background vocal orgy psychedelic kitchen stink party kind of vibe where you can hear all the long hot days and freeways it took to make and when I spy the list of luminaries on this long player I can see all of them making their easy and uneasy ways along the 10 and the 101 and the 405 on their windows rolled down way to the session with all manner of weirdness strewn about the floor of the passenger side of their cars this record puts me somewhere I know well and its really more like an artful, sonic psychedelic documentary than anything else so tune in to radio jeff merchant and visit an LA that he both created and inhabits cuz there’s no differentiating between the city (which makes no sound) and the inside of his head (which does) and the song-music water-falling out of the headphones and though I promised myself I would not dance on the slippery slope of commenting on “standout tracks†because this is a good old fashioned record in that its beauty is in it’s wholeness, however, “eggshell†knocked me out but so did the whole record I mean it’s Merchant’s LA we just get stuck in traffic in it and hopefully with a copy of this cd in the changer. I cannot possibly list all the incredible lyrics in here not to mention the LA references which are a total joy to pick around for. Michael Rozon deserves more than a mention for his above and beyond the call of duty co-producerial and co-arranging flights of genius…
http://www.jeffmerchantmusic.com/
I could say a lot more but YOU NEED THIS RECORD should really be enough.
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