Ganglians - Found Sounds 'n Sad Slackers

Fun fact: Sacramento has one of the highest unemployment rates in the United States. Given that, it’s perhaps not so surprising that friendly local psychedelic popsters Ganglians are somewhat preoccupied by the realities of life under late capitalism. ‘Drop The Act’, the track which opens their euphoric third full-length effort Still Living, is nothing short of a slacker call to arms, singer Ryan Grubbs hollering with frenzied glee: “this is a sad, sad song / for all you sad, sad people / why don’t you pick up the phone / and tell me what you’re gonna do?”

Recovering from the flu contracted on a recent tour, guitarist Kyle Hoover is chipper about the band’s situation. “Worklessness, joblessness, feeling as though you should be doing something with your life but are completely unable to do so. On [‘Drop The Act’] I know that Ryan’s trying to capture an ‘inspire our generation’ [vibe], but … there’s sort of like a mocking sort of feel, like, ‘Yeah! Let’s get together and do nothing, guys!’”

A double irony, as in a few short years Ganglians (a play on ‘Gangly Aliens’ or ‘Gang of Aliens’ – take your pick) have compiled a small but impressive discography, their most recent effort being preceded by the sprawling lysergic spatter of Monster Head Room as well as their self-titled debut. Coming together over a shared love of Brian Wilson’s sixties songwriting (particularly the creepily beautiful Smiley Smile), Hoover also cites The Millenium’s Begin – “the most perfect studio pop record of the sixties” – as a vital touchstone.

Integral to Ganglians’ take on hooks and harmonies is their incorporation of found sounds and samples, lending their songs a cinematic edge. “[We] like to give it that element of escapism,” says Hoover. “When you circulate that sound collage stuff, it makes it feel like you’ve created your own little universe … we use [samples] for that purpose, [establishing] atmosphere … But on [tracks] like ‘Things to Know’, they’re just plain silly – like you know, where the motorcycle builds up and he’s like, riding off into the distance.

While Still Living is rife with tongue-in-cheek touches, Ganglians are just as capable of offering songs up straight from the heart. “’California Cousins’ and ‘Sleep’ are much more personal songs,” says Hoover, “especially for Ryan, he was dealing with relationship issues and whatever else … Half of the album is us getting together and jamming stuff out; half the [songs] were probably written in one night,” he explains. “Then there were songs like ‘Sleep’ that took us like weeks to figure out how we wanted it to work. It’s kind of a bit all over the place.”

Despite his recent brush with the lurgy, Hoover is keen to get back on the road – anywhere’s better than Sacramento. “We’ve been stuck at home, I’m at my folks’ house and Ryan’s able to couch surf wherever we are, but there’s a large period of time where we’re both jobless and homeless. We’re like, ‘When can we get on tour again so we don’t have to worry about life!’ That said, we’ve always both known that the best part about being in a band is writing a record and being in a studio and recording,” he says. “It’s the most magical experience.”


First published in The Brag, Iss. 428, September 6th 2011

Pajama Club - Pajama Club

The first and most important thing to say about Pajama Club is that they are not Crowded House. Nor should they be seen as simply another vehicle in which Neil Finn might practice his songwriting mastery. Rather, they are a band in their own right, Finn being joined by Auckland songwriter Sean Donnelly, drummer Alana Skyring (ex-The Grates) and his better half Sharon Finn, whose contributions here, both on bass and vocally, combine to ground the project (as they undoubtedly have her husband’s career) while lending it a dark, sultry edge.

Opener ‘Tell Me What You Want’ sets the score in this regard, Sharon singing “tell me what you want / show me how to do it / tell me what you need / I can do anything” in a breathy mantra over an oh-so-smooth bassline. Indeed, Pajama Club is a surprisingly bass-heavy listen; the punchy power-pop chorus of ‘Daylight’ is reached via a verse punctuated with deep and menacing eruptions, with a sense of earthing also true of the simmering ‘Dead Leg’ or ‘TNT For Two’.

Finn has obviously gotten a kick out of experimenting with his friends – everything is coloured with sampled sounds and electronic ornament. That said, it is the stripped-back acoustic ‘Golden Child’ that forms the record’s emotional core, dealing with touching eloquence on the pains of letting one’s offspring go. The album highlight, it is also the odd one out, being more reminiscent of Ghost Of A Saber-Tooth Tiger’s Acoustic Sessions, Sean Lennon’s serially underrated project with Charlotte Muhl, than the night-life flavours of the rest.

Pajama Club provides an equally invigorating and oddball answer to the question of what to do when one’s excessively hirsute offspring flies the coop.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 425, August 22nd 2011

Fruit Bats - Tripper

The preoccupations that Eric D. Johnson chews over on Fruit Bats’ fifth record are summed up pretty much perfectly on Tripper’s cover: a small band of antelope stand on a sun-dappled prairie, a dirt track disappearing over a low hill below a big sky, cumulus roiling gigantic away towards the horizon. It’s so striking that Sub Pop have been thoughtful enough to blow it up times five on the accompanying fold-out poster-cum-lyric-sheet – normally these things aren’t worth commenting on, but if ever an image said ‘freedom’, this is it.

On 2009’s excellent The Ruminant Band, Johnson threw the emphasis of his one-time solo project onto the talents of Fruit Bats’ full band; with Tripper he’s wound it back a bit, biting off harder, richer, but lonelier fare. Unlike the invented mythology of fellow indie folksters Blitzen Trapper, or the meandering musings of Vetiver’s Andy Cabic (whose longtime producer Thom Monahan has done a stellar job here), Johnson spins rangy yarns of characters seeking a path into the wide blue yonder.

‘Tony The Tripper’ sets the score: life led on the fly and chance meetings with random sorts, over a simple propulsive riff and Johnson’s Robert Plant-ish cries. These ideas are also covered on ‘Heart Like An Orange’, or the organ-powered ditty ‘Dolly’, an equally organ-powered persona talking the title lass into hitting the road… The flip-side to giving free-rein to feet with a mind of their own – expulsion to the “fucked up world” – is charted in a surprisingly effective Bee Gees falsetto in ‘The Banishment Song’. But as he sings in late album highlight ‘Wild Honey’, “to own nobody / to owe nobody” is, for some, an end in itself.

For Johnson freedom comes at a price, but it’s one that is ultimately worth paying. Much like this excellent record.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 425, August 15th 2011