Beulah Land

Harlem-Free Drugs;-)






Maybe it's the sort of thing that you unconsciously manifest, but when I moved to Portland for the first time a few years ago and started getting involved in the gallery and Hovercraft it seemed to me the most ridiculous possibility that there would be a lo-fi/garage/indie/whatever revival. But then when it started to happen it made a lot of sense. It's about as unnecessary as the new wave/post-punk/whatever rehashing we enjoyed not too long ago or the whole mash-up/edit debacle we're still enmeshed in. And I guess that makes it pretty sensible in a cultural arena as obsessed with recontextulization. I'm not the only one who finds myself listening to an album I already know I don't like thinking that I might feel differently about it now, right?

The most frustrating thing about rock music is that there are so many cultural cues that, for the most part, end up boiled down to the same redundant 'oh, that's.. cool' moment. it's redundant. it's so redundant it's redundant to even talk about it.

All of this being said, sometimes it's so done so fucking well, it's so immaculately executed, that it doesn't matter. Such is the case with Harlem's Free Drugs;-). The sort of record that immediately induces deja vu. Which is actually a pretty useful metaphor as the music also sounds like these guys' brains have been tripping over themselves for sometime.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!