Radar Bros - S/T

Slow and drowsy. Dusty and hot. This record, the Radar Bros' debut, was picked up on a whim from a cut-out bin somewhere and after awhile came to optimize for me the alterego of the Brian Wilson sunny day California sound. Hopeful melancholy, warm reflection in simple, stripped-down opiate arrangements. Like the heavy-lidded warmth of an oxycodone n red wine buzz as you lay in your bed at 2pm on a sunny 72 degree day and you definitely don't want to think about tomorrow.


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I'm actually gonna post here a review from Amazon.com because it's one of the best descriptions on this record I came across... or maybe it just matches my feelings best: While the Radar Bros. always save room for excursions into subdued theatrical art-rock, they seem most at ease with the simple, sublime melodies that keep their music from drifting into space. While "The Singing Hatchet" is their tightest production to date, this album is their most effective mood piece. Their primary tone is not one of depression so much as distant longing and quietly regretful resignation, as in the repeated line from "Underwater Culprit": "you can leave the show at any time." Not to say that this album is without range. The melodic variety in the first half is balanced out by more subtle stokes in the second half. The complex Southern California micro-epic "Stay" sits comfortably alongside the simple, haunting harmony of "Supermarket Pharmacy," in which a poignant pastiche of morbid images offer a rare moment of lyrical clarity.

But the Radar Bros. are, fortunately, not preoccupied with clarity. Although driven by the same pop aesthetic that propelled Pink Floyd before they were officially fried beyond recognition, this music is meant to drift into your consciousness, rather than immerse it. If Jim Putnam started singing about his need for psychotherapy, the album would lose its greatest attribute: it's comfort music. For a bleak, airy sunny afternoon or a long, rainy night, "Radar Bros." takes little time to grow on you and, after a while, feels like home.

yeah, it's like mac n chee


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