New Music | Fly Golden Eagle - You Look Good To Me
Fly Golden Eagle’s Quartz is a record you’ll want to hand down to your children, and you’ll just have to hope on hope that it doesn’t ruin their lives by making them the coolest little mother fuckers on the block. I mean, seriously, this record could derail the plans you have for their college careers. And yet, it would be cruel to keep them in the dark, wouldn’t it? Get your priorities straight, man. The futures of your hypothetical children depend on it.
Quartz is a sexual assault from the 1970s, & you’re not going escape the encounter with less than a pearl necklace. And you might end up sojourning to Tibet afterwards. It’s a leather jacket for your brain. And it’s a record that you need to listen to very, very loudly.
In case you haven’t gathered, this is my favorite record of 2014.
The full version of Quartz is 26 tracks strong, & lines up with Alejandro Jodorowski’s weird-ass 1973 film The Holy Mountain, a la Dark Side/Wizard of Oz. (The Hole Mountain was produced by the Beatles’ second manager, Allen Klein, & funded by George & John.) It was mostly recorded in the art deco remains of the Trinity College library in Tehuacana, TX, which was abandoned in the 1940s. And it sounds like all of that. Which is to say Sly Stone & Sgt. Pepper strapped together with a bolt-on supercharger, filtered through the frank urban decay of the Motor City, & assembled with a precision that rarely manifests outside of Nashville, TN. Fuzzed out bass guitar, plate reverb, horns, swirling organs, machine gun drums, psychedelic harmonies, gospel choir guitars… & then there’s Ben, who is half lovesick school boy, half prophet descending from the mountain. Half palpitating labido, half ruminating philosopher. It’s all art. Very art. And good art, at that. Art with heart, & art that grooves.
Strap in. You’ll like it.
