Julian Lynch - Orange You Glad (Olde English Spelling Bee LP)

Hot off the presses at Foxy Digitalis:

Julian Lynch is a name that's been flying around a lot recently in the hypnagogically obsessed blog-o-sphere with this record in many ways representing his introduction to the world beyond. And it's easy to understand why—Lynch has a knack for a hook and is just this side of scuzzy enough that even your freckled nephew could throw it on alongside his recently uncovered Pavement collection. The whole thing drifts along just right, with it's cautiously constructed naivety serving as the time machine on a revisit of your now-foggy fondnesses. It makes for lovely basking.

Yet with a lot of this stuff, it seems people are missing the point. Yes, Lynch's tunes are as billowing as they come, their melodies emerging as naturally as “Here Comes the Sun.” But beneath that, there is a sincerity that exudes distaste of the scene it has emerged out of. “Rancher” is halfway between “Before and After Science”-era Eno and the soundtrack to Twin Peaks and, while both of those things do happen to fall into the time period roughly alluded to by the beach crazed Maui/mall rat hubbub of late, it is far more than gazing from abroad. This stuff deals too closely with the sounds as they present themselves to do that. Each strum is treated fully, each bass line given its space and voice in the mix. This is as much about production as it is about songwriting, and Lynch is a master at the knobs. It's definitely lo-fi, but it's lo-fi in a 4-track kind of way; he's doing about as much as he can with the materials at hand. Dig the horn line on “Mercury” for further proof, it's lazy gestures floundering about on languid lines of drifting hydrangeas.

If anything the second side is even more lackadaisical and loping than the first. This is really Lynch at his best, especially on tracks like “Winterer Two,” where his mini orchestra sounds like everything it's pulling from but with enough of a sense of its own voice to thwart them all of connotation. Lynch avoids these connotations in his music by superseding them with an undeniable presence of his own voice as he pushes off from the mangled groupings of bloggers everywhere. And this is a most refreshing thing. Not to mention a damn good record.