Dream-pop: a murky world of non-descript lyrical mutterings, sloping rhythms and drowsy guitars. Or for Cameron Ember, vocalist and guitarist in Tiny Little Blackouts, a forgiving genre of music where even one's most rudimentary guitar fiddlings can be hidden behind that most ethereal of rock genres. In any case, "Idea of Alice", the debut album from this San Francisco-based band, charts a course through the calm-calm-choppy seas of woozy American indie, an album that tips more than a hat to Mazzy Star (particularly the vocals), the Cocteau Twins and early Verve (when they were indeed just Verve, sans-definite article). Lamb44, and its companion (although reprise is probably more accurate) piece, Lamb68 (the only real difference being the trade-up from 2/2 to 6/8), feature a drifting but rhythmic guitar and laconic ethereal vocals from Ember. Nursery rhyme-esque lyrics ("Little lost lamb/left on the plain") sit slightly at odds with the walls of feedback drenched guitars and subtle strings, but the whole thing blooms quite beautifully, a paradoxically rambling, yet at the same time dynamic, slow-burner.
In fact, the whole album is a series of beautiful conflicts: sweet sixties-infused dream-pop battles it out with bitter-sweet melancholy, with lyrics such as "You're as twisted/ as your feet are small/you're as gentle as a wrecking ball" ("Wrecking Ball") and "I thought I would be free at last/from the tyranny of/social scenes past" ("Happy Is Dead For Now") emerging from the siren-like murmurs that escape Ember's mouth. The song titles and lyrics lay bare the slightly troubled nature of the music, often disguised below the warm and strangely comforting blanket of fuzz. Indeed, "You're Too Nice", with its laconic chorus "Let it all be over/burn it away" and piercing guitar solo demonstrate a rapier-sharp edge to a seemingly bleary-eyed pop song. Likewise "Happy Is Dead Now" which hides its disconsolate bushel under a foreboding cloak of swirling noise. From this emerges, mid-section, a persistent drum-roll and chugging guitar riff that build to a climax, as the pleasant warmth of the previous tracks is turned up, unleashing a firestorm (relatively speaking) before being doused once again, as the song plummets back down into a light and breezy acoustic-glockenspiel combo that accompanies the track to its door.
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"Angry Santa" lashes a bit of Low-aping slowcore (and we all know how much that group adore that description) to the boat, as psychedelic guitars echo and burn-out, like the remnants of shooting stars, fading out in the twilight of the song. For whilst the band's influences are clear, the variety displayed on the album is heartening, from light brushes with the glockenspiel ("Happy Is Dead Now" and the drifting "Cherry Blossom") to organ rumblings on "Wrecking Ball" and delicate acoustic guitars on the album-closer, "Winter In Our Hearts". This last one is different though. Adopting a jazzy shuffle and the plaintive wailings of a single guitar, like the sound of a whale in mourning, it feels like the sweet, sweet sound of desolation. It's the track that picks up in a smoky bar at 4.33am, the panda-eyed bar-tender mopping a glass, the last dregs of down-trodden humanity staring into their empty wallets, their empty mugs, and their empty souls before returning to their empty beds. It swirls around, dragging its feet, staggering wearily around the chorus - "It's winter in our hearts/put my hand in the boiling water/thought I'd cry for the day I didn't feel it" - with the lonely guitar echoing and swirling lethargically. It's quite an unexpected turn to take, but it works very well.
This sort of deconstructed fuzz is the genre of music that the Americans do so well. It's like waking up on a Sunday morning to the sun shining across your face and your room bathed in a warm glow. This is unpretentious music, a pea-souper of glazed-eyed murmurings and perfectly forged dream-pop, that is certainly worthy of a drowsy-headed listen.
Robot123 Records
Tiny Little Blackouts on Myspace
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