Friday, April 2, 2010

Black Tambourine

Black Tambourine was one of the names that got checked, fairly often, in the initial flurry of enthusiasm over Vivian Girls…and yeah, you can see some parallels, the fuzzy guitars, the dreamy half-focused girl vocals, the uneasy abutting of noise and pop. But now with Slumberland’s 17-track retrospective of this early 1990s, American-born adulator of sheeny, sheets-of-sound, shoegaze, you can see that there’s a lot here that never made it into the Vivian Girls aesthetic. I am personally really enjoying the skree and squall of MBV-ish feedback over puppy-cuddly melodies, yes, yes, yes. Reminds me of the Vaselines from just about the same era, different continent.

Anyway, I’m not writing about this, except to the extent that I just did (barely), but why not check out the free track, which is “For Ex-Lovers Only”?

Hey, d’ya think Beck wrote that “Black Tambourine” song about these guys? Or was it an actual black tambourine.

Have a good weekend.

No comments: