REVIEW: Street Gnar - Kenwicked

Street Gnar is Lexington, KY resident Case Mahan. Kenwicked is named after the Kenwick neighborhood in Lexington, where he records and resides. It's a bewitching record - hypnotic and washed-out, with some mellow bass, guitar and electronic drum sounds, and with Mahan's quiet, treated vocals achieving a sort of bluesy quality in places. He's got a tremendous sense of melody, too.

Here's "Double R, G":

And here's a long, really pretty instrumental, "Curves" - in places reminiscent of The Cars, but much more mellow and stretched-out. He gets into a pleasing groove, and just sort of plays it in a repeating loop, while playing some subtly different guitar lines at two different levels (at least I think those are guitars):

And the title cut, the last song on the record, another terrific instrumental that starts out in a sort of quiet krautrock groove, building upon a quietly insistent bass line that, frankly, is its own reward:

Mahan's clearly got a talent for taking some small hook and building it into a theme, and then a full song that draws you in and makes you want to just hit "repeat". You can buy it at the Bandcamp page by clicking through any of the tracks above, or you can visit Gnar Tapes' website.