The
Lassie Foundation "California" by Chad Johnston
Rocket-Fuel
Magazine's Review of the Lassie Foundation "Pacifico"
The
Lassie Foundation "Pacifico" by Chad Johnston
The
LeisureSuit.net's Review of the Lassie Foundation's "Pacifico"
Splendid E-zine's
Review of the Lassie Foundation's "Pacifico"
Excellent review of the Lassie Foundation's
"Pacfico" at http://www.babysue.com/Reviews-May-99.html
Okay... there's a bear on the cover of this EP. It looks kind of like the Missouri State logo bear. It's almost like they borrowed him or something. But that's not the point. With a name like "the Lassie Foundation," one would naturally expect to see that darned overachieving dog from black and white TV on the cover. I never watched that show because I hated it. That's not the point either. Word has it that the Foundation's founders, Wayne Everett and Eric Campuzano derived the band name from the ever-so-hip term, "lass," as in girl... Anyway, this disc is excellent. And I'm not saying that simply because the inside jacket sleeve features a picture of Everett's high school girlfriend in a cheerleader outfit either. No, no, it's excellent because the listener falls in love with the music. At first, I thought it was lo-fi and average. Upon further listening, I discovered pop magic and a strange allure explainable only by the use of some sort of musical pheremone. On the other hand, maybe this disc just grows on the listener immensely. It's catchy, trippy, fuzzed-out, Beach-Boys-on-acid music. All five songs rock, especially "Laid With Cool" with it's trip-kick drum fills and seemingly cattywompus time signature. The guitars pop and fizz like a toaster in a bathtub full of water. And who can forget that confound bear on the cover? Upon closer scrutiny, one can tell that someone colored in said bear with a marker because one can see carefully drawn lines stretching across the animal's body. Does this disc rock or what?
With falsetto vocals, a definite musical nod to the "shoegazer" pop that the UK produced a lot of in the early 90's, and smoothly done production that equally emphasizes the smoothness of Wayne Everett's voice and the distorted guitars of Campuzano and Jeff Schroeder, comparisons between this band and My Bloody Valentine will probably be made by a lot of people. "Scapa Flow", this album's opener, will probably make keepers of the Kevin Shields flame very happy. However, as other songs on here (especially "Dive Bomber") show, The Lassie Foundation can also get a bit of indie-pop's jangle into the mix; the end result is an album that, to this reviewer, combines the best aspects of Superchunk's Indoor Living and the Boo Radleys' Giant Steps.
The guitars on this album waver between cleanly melodic and magnificently distorted, just as the vocals go from falsetto to smoothly crooned. This is music that can make you drift off to sleep with a smile on your face, or it will keep your ears attentively tuned to the stereo. "El Rey" has a dreamy, relaxed feel to it that conjures up the idea of Unrest's "Isobel" as produced by Alan Moulder, while "The Moon Won't Let You Wait" goes for a more straightforward rock feel. On "Kisses as Bounties," Everett's voice starts off low, and it's a striking effect after seven songs of much higher-pitched vocals.
According to the press material, "El
Rey" was recently featured on a Buffy episode, suggesting that big things
are ahead for this band. Who knows, maybe their shoegazer revivalism will
spark a new trend, and Slowdive and Ride records will be all the rage again.
This band certainly has the musical chops to pull it off; let's hope that
someone out there is listening.
The Lassie Foundation recalls all the
crutch adjectives reviewers often vomit upon the great power pop bands,
dreamy being the first, followed by sunny, catchy, irresistible, and gorgeous.
I'd
add ephemeral and toasty, and then
I'd stop to use other images, like "to the ears what Starburst is to the
tongue," or "a fuzzy, flannel beach blanket on which one can roll around
and absorb
the remaining solar rays before sundown."
How about "an entire album of R.E.M.'s "Eleventh Untitled?" The closet
Green fan in me pushes for that one.
See, I'm trying my durndest to talk about "Pacifico" without using California as a metaphor for something intangible and manic-depressive and historic…be it Ava Gardner's Malibu or Axl Rose's West Hollywood, but there's something about this album, this style of playing, singing, perhaps songwriting, that's inextricably Californian, whether or not it's done on purpose.
What else? Well, this little independent
record has a very high-end sound, a sound many richer bands (Smashing Pumpkins
comes to mind) spend thousands upon thousands of dollars
attempting to achieve. And The Lassie
Foundation has already got a secret weapon, a point upon which critics
and fans will obsess: cryptic, mumbled lyrics. I've listened to "Pacifico"
three times, and f**k if I can make out a single word on the whole record
(except the title.) Young bands take note: this technique made Michael
Stipe a wealthy man.
All this sea-spray noise, this aural
slo-mo video (with Anthony Kiedis running and breathing heavily), this
jingle-jangle beach blanket bingo hand job, it all started when Murry Wilson
hit his
son Brian in the head with a lead
pipe. A couple of piano lessons later, an entire musical genre was born.
Surfboards. Self-administered Beatles haircuts. The usual cars n'
girls roundup. Milkshakes and roller skates. Got to believe we are magic.
Ooh, our lips are sealed. Under them skies of blue. The workers are going
home. The workers are going home.
I know it's early, but I've been thinking
about my year-end poll. If the rest of the albums released in 1999 are
as good as "Pacifico," my top ten should be a breeze.
Art in Pop-culture
is a rare and underrated expression. Bands that lend themselves completely
to the artistic side of the spectrum often remain obscure (i.e. Over
the Rhine: Who? What? When? Exactly.), while bands that
frequent the "Pop" end of the spectrum enter into success and eminent cultural
rejection almost simultaneously (Hello and goodbye to Hanson & the
Spice Girls.). The Lassie Foundation somehow allows pop sensibilities
to
embrace nostalgic/artful elements,
thus allowing them to walk the midline of the spectrum successfully.
Rather than stowing their art away in quiet poetic song structures, the
Lassie Foundation evokes antiqued romantic ideas with class and style--and
a bit of noisy swoon. Song titles like "The Moon Won't Let You Wait,"
"She's the Coming Sun," and "Kisses as Bounties" express sentiment reminiscent
of Patsy Cline's "Love Letters in the Sand," but with less naivete and
innocence. "Bomber's Moon" draws from WWII nostalgia. According
to founding member Eric Campuzano, "the bomber's moon was a full moon in
clear skies used by the Air Forces in the Battle of Britain to help them
find their targets; without it the mission was lost." Something sentimental
finds its way through such chronicles of yesterday. The black and
white photo stills of an era come alive again in a sort of "modern picture
frame" in what can only be described as a noise ballad; a loud sort of
quiet.
I arrived
at the above conclusions after being clocked on the head by a stack of
Smithsonian magazines and submerging myself in pensive, artful music for
the past few years. I guess I could back off from the Masterpiece
Theatre approach and simplify it all by saying this: The
average listener might pass this effort
off as a noisy Pop record of notable quality. (After all, one has
to be an educated collegiate critic to overexaggerate abstract qualities
in albums by obscure but brilliant indie bands. Intellectual drivel
is hard to come by, after all.)
Musically, this album is much more
refined than "California," the band's debut EP. The production is
cleaner and the songs are arranged more intelligibly, almost like a lighter
Butch Vig production project. Melody is more immediately identifiable
because of the band's abandonment of Sonic Youth-esque overdriven "background"
noise. Feedback still abounds, but less starkly. Vocalist and
co-founding member Wayne Everett relies more on layered, higher falsetto
and less on harmonies. 60's style "Ba ba ba ba" sounds a la the Beach
Boys somehow fit into Silver-era Starflyer 59-esque soundscapes.
Stylistically, the band delves into a more varied repertoire. Songs
like "Come On, Let Your Lime Light Shine" and "I Got the
Rock and Roll For You" are disco songs,
while the rest of the album qualifies as lost, remastered "California"
tracks. Every time I hear this album, I am reminded of summer
and I want to dive into the nearest ocean and float on my back for miles.
Sadly enough, the nearest ocean is thousands of miles away because Missouri
is landlocked. Too bad state governments aren't more active about
their constituents' needs... But I digress. This album is enjoyable;
the logical successor to "California." Surely it will appease the masses
upon its release.
I hate to make trite "sounds-like"
associations as much as the next guy, but I honestly think that if My Bloody
Valentine had been around to join the Elephant 6 Collective (or vice versa),
they'd have produced something very much like "Pacifico." The Lassie
Foundation is one of those bands you only want to tell a select few friends
about, as if the intimacy of their recordings will somehow be spoilt when
the band makes it big. It's a wonderful sound -- timeless pop harmonies
hidden beneath layer upon layer of
brittle flaky-pastry feedback, with Wayne Everett's dubious falsetto surfing
along the crest of the tune. An endearing assortment of analog electronic
fiddling creeps crazily through nearly every song, as if someone had wandered
into the studio during
recording and proceeded to send faxes
and repair police scanners within earshot of a live mic. Cuts like
"Dive Bomber" and "Come On, Let Your Lime Light Show" combine overdriven
sonic architecture with a core of pure Beach Boys simplicity, and the results
are invariably, inevitably gorgeous. Indeed, when the feedback trappings
suddenly dropped away for the unembellished
"Kisses as Bounties", it was only
that familiar pop footprint that convinced me I was still listening to
the same disc.
Things are clearly happening for The
Lassie Foundation. "El Rey" has supposedly been co-opted for an episode
of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," so it's only a matter of time before everyone's
all over them. You have a narrow window in which to secure "I Was
Into Them Before..." rights,
and I strongly urge you to use it
right away.
Review by George Zahora