Download: White Fence “Destroy Everything”

(from the self-titled LP out now on Make A Mess)

Did I miss the memo that said Darker My Love would show THE WAY? I don’t remember their music being as fucking fantastic as White Fence, Tim Presley’s solo project that slides like a multi-colored slug through your brain, then raids the cabinet for scones and a bit of tea. The White Fence Album is the best vinyl I’ve ever received in the L.A. RECORD crate!

What modern nostalgia! It’s something like if Audacity had taken over the Brian Jonestown Massacre, then gone back in time and tricked Greg Shaw into appearing on Pebbles III. It’s almost not worth writing a review about, when the music is beckoning me over there on the turntable to just tune in, turn on, drop out! All those fakers, from Nikki Sudden to the Miracle Workers to the Warlocks, have tried and failed to really capture the psychedelic promise of the late-early-mid sixties. And suddenly, now, in 2010 no less, our man Tim Presley just NAILS it, sliding psychedelic chalk down the Syd Barrett blackboard with such identifiably original lo-fi disjangled fogginess and Ostrich Guitar. Nothing has sounded like this since bands had names like the “Laughing Soap Dish.”

I mean, fuck, on top of it all, this album’s lyrics quietly but definitely MEAN something, and address the very real issues of fame that in a just world, a record like this would guarantee. Over a super groovy beat and fuzzed guitar riff, Presley brags that “I’m moving pages in a music magazine,” but then trivializes the very process of star-making that rags like L.A. RECORD foment: “Who feels right? Who feels tired?”

Tim don’t feel tired, that’s for fucking sure. After hearing the White Fence album, it’s a shame, really, that Presley has been yanked into the Strange Boys—it bodes well for the Boys, but badly for psyche lovers who want to sit on the floor and trip out to groovy music with a newsprint lyric sheet in hand. Hey, space cadets, want some fun? Hold the insert up to the light. You can see a scrawled comic book hand seep through the print so that it appears to grasp the arm of a creepy girl climbing up the stairs.

—Dan Collins