Nashpaints: Everyone Good is Called Molly LP
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Mad hype on this one; the second solo LP by Princ€ss member + Maria Somerville collaborator Finn Carraher McDonald aka Nashpaints , soon to be a collectors thing, big one if you’re into Escho, Cindy Lee, MBV, Jessica Pratt, 4AD, Panda Bear. There's nostalgia and there's Nostalgia, right? If you survey the output of labels like Escho and 15 love, home to ML Buch, Fine and Snuggle, you'll know that although they play fast and loose with their influences (from Fleetwood Mac to The Sundays to the Happy Mondays), they also augment their sound with so many creative elements that it's like a gust of fresh air across a weathered Northern European plain. Nashpaints has already been spotted wandering the fringes with "avant-pop supergroup" Princ€ss and is a long-time collaborator of Somerville; so it's easy to see why there's no shortage of interest surrounding 'Everyone Good Is Called Molly’. Thankfully, it delivers. It's one of those records that settles in a historical/cultural no-place, drawing from '50s girl group pop, classic shoegaze, 20th century minimalism, outsider rawk and Phil Spector- not so much a fusion of unrelated ingredients; more the work of a keen listener. McDonald charts a tumultuous relationship between noise and harmony, drawing through lines that pass from The Kinks and the Ronettes to Kevin Shields, Panda Bear and Deerhunter. His second album is pop music, of a sort, and it might also be as tapped int the ha*ntl*gical main vein as Burial's 'Untrue', but it's also endlessly creative, breaking down its influences and rebuilding them as it goes. Opener 'Molly' sounds as if it was part of the same thought process that led to Visible Cloaks' 2017 milestone 'Reassemblage', all synth-mallet sounds x swirling nu-age atmospheres. Trapping his ideas in ferric grot, he avoids the cleanness that usually accompanies the sound, accumulating white noise and adding hoarse, black metal-influenced rasps for good measure. Before we've had a chance to gather our thoughts, '23' sets the standard for the rest of the record, playing McDonald's falsetto against chiming, vibrato-laced guitar riffs, percussive outbursts and an omnipresent hiss. McDonald's skill is in finding a way to retain a structured song backbone while fucking with the trimmings: 'The Giver', for example, dissects 50s percussion and reassembles it into a shuffle, while 'Stretching' arguably does the SP-202 waltz groove better than Panda Bear. When the tone shifts on 'Boyfriend First', replacing the Spector-like trebly guitars with a Shields-esque distorted shimmer, Nashpaints’ careful use of space (and how it impacts harmony), keeps us on track. The warped new age elements that introduce the album eventually re-emerge on the second side and don't sound out of place, cushioning multi-tracked vocals on the ecstatic 'Burning' and washing out his romantic turn on 'Lost Dog', an anachronistic moment that'll surely have many swooning. Cop while you can cop.