It's surprising how simultaneously hilarious and accurate the title of the new album by Extra Happy Ghosts!!! is. On the surface, as songs like “J and 3k” and “Mash-Up: Neither Being Nor Nothingness” – with their indie rock-infused love of textural waves, glitchy electronics and early Sebadoh-esque tape designs – build undercurrents beneath singer Matthew Swann, any sort of comparison to the penultimate sunshine band is totally asinine. The squalls of noise, screechy sonics and plinky performances won't remind anyone in in the slightest of The Beach Boys and most champions of such an argument would surely be laughed from any room. The more one listens though, the more progressively obvious and justified the comparison becomes; there is indeed a similarity, but it lies in the construction of these six songs – not the sound or performance of them.
Opening tentatively with a carefully strummed acoustic guitar and a very oddly muted horn (trumpet maybe), Swann emotes softly – carefully – almost as if he dares not let anyone hear him before raging against his own self-imposed silence in “J and 3k” with an atonal electric guitar cacophony. In that moment alone, he doesn't just bring to mind the image of a man toiling and seething alone in his basement, trying to screw up the courage to let himself be heard, he IS that man.
Don't think such an execution could possibly sound like The Beach Boys? Listen closer; as the Wilson brothers did with Pet Sounds, Extra Happy Ghosts!!! builds dramatic walls of sound around the simplest melodic basics.
Delicate blankets of tape hiss envelope listeners in “J and 3k” to put them within the closest of quarters with Swann and they warm each other in that cocoon until those gangly electric guitars pierce the sack and spill its contents out every which way. As organic growths go, it's difficult to get more natural from textural sounds than that.
With those blocks and the design laid out, Swann (along with collaborators Joel Nye on drums and sound scientist Lorrie Matheson filling out the mixes) continues to build the lushest, densest soundscapes he can imagine out of gaunt, angular guitar figures and ambient sonic textures that conduct themselves as if they're appearing from a place of the highest compositional delicacy – but it's not that simple. It is within the interplay between the parts as well as Swann's own worried vocals that the “Those With No Feelings' part of the title manifests itself. As lush as the arrangements are, they're also curiously stunted; they don't progress from A to B or really develop beyond the low-fi builds and crescendos initially put forth by “J and 3K.” “Mash-up: Neither Being Nor Nothingness” expands with some tense keyboard drones and electronic glitches while “Hot Time Sartre In The City” ups the stakes with some backwards-sounding guitar chug, but there is no movement up or down; it's as if Swann re-discovered the Meat Puppets' lost Plateau or a frozen wave left behind by Brian Wilson, but just sits atop that monument and stares out because he happens to like the view.
That isn't to say that How The Beach Boys… is a bad record or a poor, uninteresting listen – it's remarkably solid and eerily sane – it just also seems completely stagnant. Everything in and about this offering is meticulously controlled, measured and monitored and presented to listeners with the understanding that those designs are there on purpose. How The Beach Boys Sound To Those With No Feelings works marvelously if one understands and expects these things in advance, but it won't work forever. The best thing that could happen to Matthew Swann now is that something comes along, shakes him up and shatters the microcosm he's fashioned for himself; it'll probably make him angry if it happens, but sometimes feeling pissed off is better than feeling nothing at all.
Artist:
Extra Happy Ghosts!!! official myspace page
Extra Happy Ghosts!!! official facebook page
Download:
“Mash-up: Neither Being Nor Nothingness” from How The Beach Boys Sound To Those With No Feelings.
Album:
How The Beach Boys Sound To Those With No Feelings is out now and available at finer record stores everywhere.
