Moon Tides – Pure
Bathing Culture
Quite some time ago, a gent in a middling band parted ways
with his girlfriend in North Carolina and took it badly. “Took it badly” as in, “took it all the way
to the woods of rural Wisconsin,” where he hunkered down and, history loosely
reinterpreted for dramatic effect, spent the next year cutting a breakup album
in a hunting shed while subsisting upon a diet of frozen crickets, melted snow
and a succession of successfully hunted deer.
The cricket detail was fabricated for effect, but the rest
of it (except maybe for the melted snow) is true; the fellow then manifested a
French Pun about his winter of despair, called himself Bon Iver, and released
the breakup album to widespread acclaim as possibly the album of the year. For
Emma, Forever Ago was quiet, exceedingly lovely, and sung in a haunted falsetto. It also featured scores of subtle effects
that elevated it well beyond the default height of either a) folk, or b) the
sad-sap rocker-goes-acoustic exercise in indulgence it might have been.
And then something really, really weird happened.
When Bon Iver re-emerged a few years later, with the
industry stature of an upper-tier Genius, he presented a second album,
self-titled. Upon that album was the
universe’s most unlikely of songs, a closing track titled, “Beth / Rest.” It was unlikely because the upper-tier genius
of “For Emma, Forever Ago” had come back to share more of himself with all of
us, and some of what he had to share was the synthetic animal spirit of 1986.
“Beth / Rest” sounded like an amalgamation of Bryan Adams,
Richard Marx and Peter Cetera, or a mythical figure we shall now refer to as
Adam Marxetera. It recalled an alchemy
of schlock. The falsetto had receded
into auto-tune, and it sounded as though it were emanating from beneath a tower
of sprayed-up curly frosted hair. Keyboard effects, Kenny Loggins guitar
heroics, and—for the love of it—saxophone proliferated. As it turns out, it may have been the final
song on the final Bon Iver album (the genius having moved forward to new band pursuits.) It may in fact have been The Last Words. And it sounded like this?
So, yes. It did. And while it might have ended there, it
didn’t. Because earlier in 2013 we
beheld the transcendental insanity of the Mary Onettes, and their
angst-on-the-beach album Hit the Waves—complete
with scores of sonic references to the steamy middle-1980s—and now this: another 1986 epithet, this one created
most-improbably in Portland, OR, by the duo Pure Bathing Culture. For the second time in a few months, we behold
an album—this one called Moon Tides—that
sounds like an homage to Adam Marxetera.
(Sung, seemingly, by the ghosts of the Cocteau Twins. Singer Sarah Versprille sounds a lot—a whole
lot—like Elizabeth Fraser.)
The drums of leadoff track “Pendulum” sound as authentic as
a street corner Rolex. They are soon
joined by multitracked guitar notes that are synthed-up to the size of
airships. There are splashes of cymbals
that do everything but leave shells and sand on the floor of your listening
area. And while all of it sounds both
cheeky and quite good, the vibe—and here we recall both the Onettes and a
million faux-heartaches of 1986—is not pleasant, not even a little bit. “And now you’re gonna swing like a pendulum,”
is the refrain. The implication is
clear: the narrator’s target is tethered,
yet adrift. The dark heart of the song,
similar to many of the tracks on Hit the
Waves months ago, floats in stark contrast to the doctored-up soundboard-project
flourishes.
Unlike Bon Iver’s self-titled finale, “Pendulum” is no
one-track dalliance with the soundtracks of Karate Kid movies. This becomes apparent within a few seconds of
track 2 “Dream the Dare,” when recorded history’s most artificial percussion
beats arrive in the company of yet more cymbals. Very quickly we have leapt from the blush of
the leadoff track’s synthetic thrall to a realization (furthered by the
knowledge that this is a debut album, and therefore the entirety of a band’s
career to date) that Something Larger is Going On Here—this is actually some
type of aesthetic.
The recipe sweetens through the first several songs before
we arrive at—in the form of track 4 “Twins,”—work whose stature truly and
seriously impresses. The guitar work and
production are so well done and spaced as to recall Mark Knopfler. (Seriously.
Honest. Really.) The lyrics reach for an entirely new
altitude:
If I could go back and find you, I
would,
I’d safely hide you far from
Those things that haunt you;
And my heart would be inside you.
This is fairly wide-angle emotional stuff, brought down to a
powerfully fine, and finely made, point.
Those first and last lines are earnest to the point of cloying, only elsewhere
to duck swiftly into darker alleys of regret.
Very well done, and it doesn’t end there. The next song “Only Lonely Lovers” is just
about as pretty, and personal, and sad.
A geography-triggered breakup, apparently, is the topic of lament:
I remember
feathered lashes hiding eyes wise, faithful—no more;
Homesick my
heart beats black: hopeless hollow love
for the one I adore.
There is more to come, and the sauce thickens further—for
better and occasionally worse. The
album’s only true downfall—if it is a downfall—is that the sonic tricks can get
a little same-y through an entire LP full of them, and those same tricks can
tend to dominate the lyrics at times.
But no matter. On a song-by-song
basis, there simply aren’t many duds here.
Also back a few months ago, Club 8 more or less swallowed
the cap when they—again, as a twosome—attempted to put together an album that
could be both intimate and epic, flashy yet haunting. The results, when they went awry, typically
did so leaving an aftertaste of saccharine behind. More than a few moments ended up sounding
like posturing.
For all of the Adam Marxetera leanings of Moon Tides, Pure Bathing Culture succeed
much more convincingly both in their joy and their sadness. Although the band blended many synthetic
elements into these songs, the results never suggest the presence of an
artificial sweetener.
Keepers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. 9
November 2013
