Michael and Brian D’Addario have been relatively unknown for
some time, especially on this side of the Atlantic, but their vintage sound is
starting to earn them quite the reputation the world over (and it couldn’t be
more well deserved). They’re only 19 and 17 years old, but they play music as
if they’ve had about half a century of experience and practice. Every song on
the album wouldn’t sound out of place if it had been released around 40 years
ago, yet somehow it feels like a huge breath of fresh air, with some people
firmly believing they’re the future of rock and roll. This doesn’t sound too far-fetched
when you consider the fact that they haven’t even been releasing music for a
year and they’ve already played “The Tonight Show”. The band make no secret of
their influences and idols, they’re massive fans of The Beach Boys and Brian
Wilson amoungst others, something which immediately puts them in my good books.
“Do Hollywood” is the duo’s debut album, a follow up to a
two track EP they released earlier this year. The opening track “I Wanna Prove to
You” immediately gives any unsuspecting listener a feel for the band’s quirky
style, it has every component required to make a classic rock and roll ballad.
This is immediately contrasted by the second track “Those Days Is Coming Soon”,
the intro sounds like a something you’d expect to hear at a fairground, but the
guitar in the chorus somehow has a garage rock sound to it, before being
followed up by a breakdown and outro with drumming that wouldn’t sound out of
place on “Sgt Peppers”.
It is worth mentioning that both members are incredibly
talented multi-instrumentalists, Brian plays guitar, bass, drums, keyboards,
horns and strings but also dabbles with the trumpet and the overdub, Michael is skilled on
guitar, drums, keys and bass and all of this genuine talent really
shines through. They recorded the album in Foxygen front-man Jonathan Rado’s living
room and gave him the reins in regards to the production, giving it an unadulterated
and untampered feel. Lyrically their songs follow relatively standard themes of
heartbreak and the general feelings and struggles of a teenage boy but
musically is it incredibly refined and mature, it very rarely follows regular
progression and arrangements. It is so far from the standard angry teen with a guitar
music that I find their age both almost implausible and extremely impressive.
In an interview with The Guardian prior to the release of
the album Michael was questioned about the clear influence of Burt Bacharach,
an orchestral pop composer and singer who was extremely prominent from the 50s
through the 80s, Michael said “It’s
just what we do, not that we’re trying to be sophisticated for its own sake.
Like, Burt Bacharach’s stuff is amazing and has a lot of things going on that
make it difficult to figure out. But we didn’t want to do it in a proggy way.
We just wanted to make it pretty.”
Other stand out tracks on the album include “These Words”, perhaps
the song where The Beach Boys’ influence shines through the most. Starting off
with a captivating drum and synth intro it mellows out and drops down to having
an almost melancholy feel, but by the end the track has evolved into something
much more powerful, with one of the most memorable vocal performances on the
album. The drumming throughout this particular track is one of the main things
that stuck in my memory after just one listen, and is a performance which Tame
Impala’s Kevin Parker would be envious of. The final track on the Album “A
Great Snake” is also the longest, at just short of seven minutes long it allows
the band to cement their musical ability in the mind of the listener one last
time It has a more low-fi sound than the majority of the other tracks, and a
guitar segment at around the three-and-a-half-minute mark that wouldn’t sound
out of place if it was being played in a stadium. The album doesn’t really have
high and low points, the constantly shifting tone of the album is enough to keep
any listener interested throughout the whole length of the album and then some.
They’re probably going to divide opinion but you can look at
them one of two ways, you could see them as a band that are simply imitating
the music of better days, or you could see them for what they are, a couple of
insanely talented musicians who have produced one of the strongest debut albums
of the last few years.
Words: Liam Navey.
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