Someone said that the imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, which leads us to the conclusion that L.A’s The Tyde is a band who can offer you nothing but pure sincerity if you judge them by the cover of their debut album Once.
The photo clearly reveals their devotion to the times gone by, showing the band in a reproduction of a usual Hight Ashbury’ 67-scene reminding us of the original protagonists like the ‘Airplane, Moby Grape or the ‘Dead. After this, as it seems, pretty clear message about the audience they’re aiming at, you’ll hear Darren Rademaker talk about the British lo-fi attraction, Felt, who carried the weight of continuing the sixties tradition through the eighties, as one of his dominant influences.
Also, as another “media-magnet”, useful in attracting a more “modern” indie audience, there’s the story about his previous band, Further, that managed to reach an almost cult-status releasing an album on Creation, so, for the old fans, the new project could be accepted as a continuation of the same path with a considerable widening and a couple of digressions into the “unexplored” areas.
Not leaving anything to a casualty, there’s also the “Americana” part to it, covered by three members of the great Beachwood Sparks who fulfill their duties in both bands at the same time, including Darren’s younger brother Brent. Adding to all of this, the presence of the tambourine-sound, made by the hands of an authentic representative of the ideology The Tyde is trying to reanimate, John “Twink”Adler, you get a combination that simply can’t leave you unaffected!
Everything that’s considered as a promise because of the visual effect, is already evident after the first few tacts of the “strawberrized” keyboards of the opening song, All My Bastard Children, leading us to an “electrified- betrayer” Dylan-interpretation.
It’s followed by New Confessions, based on Kinky-Ray’s end-of-the-’60s “storytelling phase” and than Strangers Again that, along with Improper, makes an extraordinary “sugarcoated Velvets” pair. Establishing a necessary balance, follows Lou Reed’s rower side represented by North County Times supplemented with some ’70s-Stones chorus with it’s loud echo also ringing off in The Down.
Your Tattoos is probably the most direct Felt-production tribute, thanks to it’s characteristic keyboards and “clean” ’80s sound, leaving Darren’s most witty and most ambitious side to the closing number called Silver’s Okay Michelle as a kind of a consolation for missing a gold medal at the Olympics (!?!).
Even besides a long line of references shining out of every song on Once, The Tyde still make an original musical statement, intelligently combining the best fragments of their record collections, making the “tyde” higher and higher!
[Released by Orange Sky 2001]
Be the first to comment