These are truly heady times for a music fan. Where do these bands come from? I like to imagine that there are innumerable, neon-flecked sign-up sheets loudly proclaiming, "Band started yesterday. Have computer. Need musicians. Hundreds of dollars await" posted in high-traffic areas in and around our nation's metropolitan quarters where creatively inclined and/or idle youths are likely to congregate (bus stations, train terminals, roller rinks, Target, derelict, post-industrial spaces). Perhaps this unflagging proliferation is the inevitable product of egalitarian technologies, rising attention deficits and the individual empowerment of punk rock proselytization. Maybe there will come a time when we will all have bands. Three chords and the truth will ring out from every breakfast nook in the land. If you will it, it is no dream. These days it seems that every two or three hours another mysterious assemblage of musicians has unleashed one more muddled, fractured paean upon the interwebs. How can one possibly keep up? Just when you think you have it all figured out, some wholly unfamiliar band with a pedigree that would make Eli-Whitney proud releases a song that sounds as if it might have been recorded in a ventilation shaft at a distance of 100 feet. Encomia follow. "Label" boldly promises limited pressing cassette.
I won't say Pearl Harbour is such a band, but there is scant information available on their Myspace page as to whom they might be (save a rather fierce yet blurry picture of what appears to be a turkey, claims of a Los Angeles residence and a couple of tour dates). I'm not sure what a winged albeit intelligent fowl might have to do with any of this, but Pearl Harbour do have two great, gauzy jams, ("Lost at Sea" and "Sunburn") that are oddly catchy and feel like desperate, warped, sun-kissed transmissions from a distant satellite heart. Those interested in their own copies of these tunes, should check here and here (via Nopaininpop). Those who really dig this stuff, should consider Pearl Harbour's "Calistonia Dreamin' Sessions" CD-R with handmade cover art (just $5! unless you live outside the U.S. and A. ($8)). For more information, email surfsideslasher@gmail.com. The band will also be releasing the "Something About the Chapparrals" 12" in October.
Clearly, you don't listen to this music for the virtuosity of its players, but with all things lo-fi, it seems the more you listen, the more you hear. Perhaps this explains the nascent interest in its many purveyors. In a musical landscape rife with obvious, lowest common denominator jams, these murky, layered songs are difficult, and they reward the patient and perseverant listener. What first sounds like hiss, mumbling and clatter, after a few spins, begins to bear striking resemblance to a song. By the tenth or fifteenth rotation, through some strange auditory alchemy, the noise seemingly subsides, and you actually just hear the melody. Like the sonic equivalent of a Seurat painting, what initially seems like a bunch of dots slowly comes into focus until you actually see (or hear, as the case may be) the full picture.
While these tunes are not structurally complicated, their simplicity enables a certain melodic richness, and it's interesting to think of why such bands might appeal in a world overrun by lecherous, glittered, pre-fab poptarts. While the music may seem and sound disposable, there is a certain timelessness to its spirit and aesthetic that owes a considerable debt to the forms and fashions of 50s and 60s commercial radio (as filtered through various 70s, 80s and 90s microgenres). Is it possible we're witnessing the first ripples in an "oldies" renaissance? It's not so unlikely. If we learned anything from last year's disco dalliance it was that anything (and I mean anything) is possible.
Interested in hearing more? Tune in to the One Man in a Small Room radio broadcast this coming Tuesday (7/28) from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m. for tunes from Best Coast, Real Estate, Woods, and, of course, Pearl Harbour.
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