Wednesday, May 30, 2012

REVIEW: White Fence - Family Perfume



Tim Presley is a hard working man.  More than that, Tim Presley is an inspired man.  As a member of Austin, Texas garage/folk rock group the Strange Boys, he has participated in recording music over the past few years that other artists would be proud to call their own.   He has been a member of space rock group Darker My Love.  Under the name White Fence he released two albums before this year, and he combined with Bay Area workaholic Ty Segall this spring to produce the wonderful garage rock album Hair (our review here).  Those of us who are mere mortals would be inclined to rest, and most of us would have long exhausted our inspiration.  However, as White Fence, Presley has released the double album, Family Perfume, on the Woodsit label.

Family Perfume is 28 tracks of glorious psychedelic, lo-fi garage rock, evocative of early Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayers and the Beatles psychedelic work.  Sometimes dreamy, sometimes poppy, sometimes California acid, and sometimes a few different approaches in the same song.  "Swagger Vets and Double Moon" is an acid/glam jam --


The pop side is well represented by "A Hermes Blues" and "It Will Never Be", the latter of which is reminiscent of the Kinks.






And a woozy acid folk approach in "King of the Decade", from Vol. 2 --



With 28 tracks, and an experimental approach, it is quite likely that not every track will connect with every listener.  But there are an abundance of gems, and relatively few that struck me as more ordinary.  Of course, I'm a fan of Syd Barrett psyche/folk anyway.  Frankly, I looked at the couple of lesser tracks as transitional moments.  Overall, the album displays a masterful ability to craft melodies, and, at the end of the year when I revisit this album in relation to other albums, I expect that it is going to rank highly.

Volume 1 of Family Perfume was released digitally and on vinyl in early April; Volume 2 was released in those same formats in mid-May.  A CD comprised of both volumes also is available.


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