Prints

Prints “Too Much Water”

from Prints (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

liquid acrobats as regards the bear// Out Oct. 09

(orig. pub. late Sept or earliest Oct. 2007)                

“We-u-duh wuh-duh woo-duh w-e-l-l-l, whoah! Oh, oh, ” or something like that. Shaken awake, and possibly baked, Kenseth Thibideau and Zac Nelson rise like wise commuters from the jungle womb of tongues, herded on the grapevine, and smartly dressed in syllables that now line up like the morning paper’s headlines, expansive and cautionary: “Nothing to say, and everywhere to walk, magical myst-err-ee, is right as snow, it melts, gives us spring. Is it magic, if it’s easy, if it’s easy, is it magic?” Aye lads, a lotta men tried and a lotta men died the death of credibility, trying to reach the combination of spaciness, soulfulness, and spot-on detail that Brian Wilson blew his youth and and his mind on, so that the results that once seemed to come so quickly would cost another forty years to reappear, in the guise of Brian Wilson Presents Smile, finally skimmed off the unicorn horn of an impossible ideal (in the tombs of some fans’ expectations). But Thibideau and Nelson, who have crowned themselves Prints, get it right right off, on their self-titled debut. They make it look easy, so why should we believe them, or our ears? They’re bound to slip off the surfboard in a moment. But they don’t, because they never got on it: Beach Boys references are just useful tracking devices, and (speaking of expansive and cautionary headlines, in the hands of commuters), the call and response and pull of Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime” comes to mind too, while our self-employees are rolling and tumbling through each day’s subaquatic universe (eight in thirty-five minutes and twenty-one seconds, as this boombox tracks ‘em). It’s all good: Morse code men-digits, off the train and driven home by the insistent beats of phonemes and phoned-home (but never phoned in) E.T. chirps and meaty burps, art cute and art brut, ick and motorik, like “Fun, Fun, Fun!” racing “Fahn-fahn-fahn auf de Autobahn, “ where there’s no speed limit, especially under water. Such familiar points of aspiration and hype indent the inner surface of Prints, the easily ridden but not quite simple temple of the dimple (but not vice versa, for a dimple of a temple might lead to a lobotomy, what this music could also easily resemble). Not to get caught up in the speedy stasis of shiny detail any more than that of zoned-out tonepone, these West Coast indie vets test their breakthrough with shiny detail and zoned-out tonepone, so that distorted thumb pianos ring as clearly as question marks, and drums roll and chop like waves (and the knife of the guy fixing your munchies at Subway), while vocal layers curve like comet trails, attracted to the braided rings of Saturn. (Tuvan-style throat-singing somehow gets a little Mike Love-nasal around the edges, but doesn’t disturb “Meditation.”) “All We Knead” gives the continuum a deep massage. Not that “Pretty Tick” doesn’t seem to flick furry fellow harmonists like Animal Collective, and Prints’ own twee: “There’s a pretty tick, suckin’ blood an’ shit, oo-oo-oo-oo-oo.”

Such (in-effect, whether consciously intended or not) self-inclusive doo-doo doodles are  oblique (and not too frequent) strokes across the path along which Thibideau was lured from the undercurrents of instrumental-only groups like Tarantel, who sometimes found their way into the climbing pipelines of “For Carl Sagan” and “Another Side of Myself Pt.2, “ but sometimes didn’t. On 1999’s From Bone To Satellite, “For Carl Sagan” builds from circular (in this case orbiting?) repetition of one guitar’s notes, with the other guitar  completing a phrase (like a couple who can finish each other’s sentences, but in melancholy, where resignation and steadfastness seem the same). but “For” ‘s dedication just keeps building, in resurgence of resolve and anticipation, sense of expanding space, or what’s waiting for those who venture out once more, til get to rackety apex turns into another plateau, that goes on a bit too long. But lots of feeling in there, and clarity, and ditto, more concisely, on the 2002 Ephemera  EP’s “Two Sides of Myself,” pt.s 1 and 2, with the dayside of such resolve, in Pt. 1’s ruminations in transit (commuter making notes to self on guitar), and Pt. 2’s nightside variation on that (flashing away like a BART train, through a Sonar signal’s smoke ring). Despite other excursions like “ Golden State Overnight,” from the Paper White EP, Tarentel could turn too introverted, shying from corn, but from engaging devices too. “Post-rock, “ you know? Yet overall, Tarentel was (and is) sensuous and dynamic, and the slippery surface and depths of its approach may have encouraged Thibideau to leave when the group approached a peak of popularity. Maybe it wasn’t as much a matter of frustration as graduation.  

By 2004, he found himself spending Summer In Abbadon with the group Pinback, who put private misgivings up front, plain and hazy as day: “She’s posting all the time, but the boards are down. It’s a burned-out building. He’s spending all his time on his back, staring at the ceiling. They spend themselves like that, I’m with that, I’m with them. Come on, you aren’t. You are. Alive, dammit.” You is and you ain’t, my babies. ”Crayon past the line, stay after school. Crossword filled in non-blue, now they’ll never find you.” Uh-uh, the title of that is “Photo Non Blue,” ‘cause you were caught on film or digits, caught making art and/or fudge, that’s what marks and smears the line between magic and other stuff. In this universe of stuff, about which there are several leading theories, but which sure does seem to have some kind of a sell-by date stamped on it somewhere.

Meanwhile, back in Prints, our featured track, “Too Much Water, “ seems both worried and not worried. Well-fed stomps and handclaps, like in the Beach Boys’ “Do It Again, “ at least at first, seem to not be listening to chirps at midnight (all transcriptions approximate): “Barnya-r-r-d, knight ‘n’ sword, no need the light, it’s okay, hit it to the old…”(Beats hit it back, like hamhocks as baseball bats.) “I know I’m swimmin’ out of deep black water, so many cups, too much water, evil is runnin’, jump in, float through ceilin’, too much water!” Not to swim in, that is. So, between drought and floods, in this lucky ol ’07, which gets to listen to this long-time-coming short-player all summer long, hit it back through scarecrow October, c’mon and do it again.