Fuzzed-out solo power-pop from lone Buffalo Killer
Buffalo Killers guitarist Andy Gabbard is a one-man herd on this solo debut, writing, singing and playing the entire album in a single 12-hour recording session. The music has some hallmarks of grunge in the guitars, but even more so, the muscular psych-tinged ’90s power pop of Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub and Velvet Crush, as well as 1960s-era Freakbeat. Gabbard mixes his vocals onto the same plane as the instruments, leaving his buzzing, overdubbed guitars to do a lot of the talking and his drums and cymbals to fill in the spaces. And it works: the rhythm guitars growl, the leads pierce the wall of fuzz, the drums add accents, and the vocals tie it all together with processed sounds and surreal lyrics. The acoustic intro to “Look Not Sound†suggests Big Star, and a duet with Summer Sherman on “More†echoes the boy-girl dynamic of the Pooh Sticks. It’s hard to imagine how someone can produced twelve original, creative and fully finished band tracks in twelve hours without a band to play them live, but here they are, and with four bonus live tracks on the CD edition. It’s both a feat and a treat. [©2015 Hyperbolium] 