my bedroom, reverb, dd-20, joose, st. marys, drop nineteens.
Sounds Like
"A true one-man outing, Matthew O’Rourke’s self-titled disc as Tassel, though small in stature (7 tracks in 16 minutes), defies these parameters in the vast scope of its sound. Playing as a full band, and heavy on the jangle and the reverb, tracks like “Untitled”, “Good Morning Autumn”, and “Silver Car Crash” cannot help but conjure the ghosts of 4AD and Sire of the 80/90 flip, bands like Ride, Lush, and of course, My Bloody Valentine. Though O’Rourke has a clearly studied sense of shoegaze, the true birthright is found in the production, as the crunchy texture of the atmospheric drone “Coney Sand” sounds channeled directly through a Buddha Machine, and the uncanny percussion and clean guitar sound (not to mention title) of “Star 80” could have been pulled off any number of the above band’s “best of” as the token, rave-down ballad. Whether as a nostalgic rechanneling or as one’s first encounter with the genre, the disc offers a smart, raw take without over-reaching in any direction. For me, the best of here is, without contest, “Way Far Out”, a dead-on ‘Mezcal Head’-era Swervedriver up-tempo jam of harmonizing guitars, bass, and stacking percussion; vocal interplay threaded through both channels and fully saturated. Stellar; a full-length of equal track quantity would be the flannel shit! Comes on Tic-Tac orange CDr with water-colored, machine-sewn sleeve. Limited to 40 copies."-animalpsi
