Release Date: August 23, 2011
Have we heard this all before? Yes. Is it wonderful to hear it all again, and in the form of Ganglians? An emphatic yes.
What the Sacramento quartet have done on their third record (and first for Lefse, after releasing two on Woodsist) is meld their mish-mosh of modern indie rock and pop styles into a heady brew of lovely and compelling melodies and C86-inspired jangliness, all constructed within a cathedral-like echo chamber to connect the parallel lines between Bon Iver and The Besnard Lakes, The Shop Assistants and The Horrors.
Listeners who used to live in The House Of Love or Chapterhouse will be at home here, as will those that still bop to the rhythm of The Black Tambourine and have come to love rock again after discovering The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart.
Yes, it’s yet another group that can’t be described without a deluge of influences, but what makes Ganglians unique and worth standing on their own?
Listeners not thoroughly immersed in the mis-en-scène of shiny, shimmery shoegazery will still relate to the engaging melodies, winning guitar hooks and lovely intervals that create a miasma that makes their indelible sleeve tattoos of influence easy to forgive.
“Evil Weave” somehow weaves the melodies of Blondie’s “Union City Blue” and Rihanna’s “S+M” together with the guitar sound of Cocteau Twins and arch foreign echoey baritone bleats reminiscent of your random Rough Trade rarity. Somehow, against all odds, it works. “Sleep” merges the aggression of Midnight Oil with the sombre self-reflectedness of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”
On “Jungle” they bring Fleet Foxes choruses to a riff circa “I Want Candy,” and like AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” mellowed out but bouncing off Slade’s “Runaway.” “Bradley” takes the minimalist atmosphere of Galaxie 500 and the simple shambling of a Nico-led Velvets’ ballad (i.e. “Femme Fatale”) but makes the song something somehow all Ganglians.
Still Living is a record for those hoping to discover that great lost demo from The Mighty Lemon Drops or a rare 7-inch single from The Pastels that no one has heard.
Kudos to Ganglians for going all over the modern musical map and still somehow creating a new terra firma, a nouveau Pangaea out of these disparate continents. If not that, then perhaps it’s at least a narrow land bridge across the modern indie pop scenes.
If there is a Sacramento scene, they’ve done a good job at being as un-Sacramento-like as possible (not that there’s anything wrong with Sacramento, of course). Judging by the first spin, Sacramento is probably the last place one would would look to find the origin of this record.
While the tracks tend to blend together after repeated listens, each is so charming that’s an easily forgivable offense.
How different this world would be today if Ganglians had landed on Gilligan’s Island instead of those pesky Mosquitoes. Maybe they’ll have a guest slot performing when it relaunches as a reality show. After all, hasn’t everything been done before? That might even be the ghost of the late Bob Denver clowning around under a white sheet in the middle of a forest on the cover.
Listeners are just lucky to have Still Living as the soundtrack to preparing their shoreline HELP! message lit up by the flames of so many indie record warehouses burning down. At least until something truly new comes along.
Ganglians – Still Living Tracklist:
- “Drop The Act”
- “That’s What I Want”
- “Evil Weave”
- “Sleep”
- “Jungle”
- “Bradley”
- “Things To Know”
- “Good Times”
- “The Toad”
- “California Cousins”
- “Faster”
- “My House”
