Andrew Parker - The Gong Show

October 20, 2009

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Espers - The Pear

New Espers record, III, is out today. It’s great, typical slinky sound but also different than earlier records, there is more space in the songs, more room for the band to breath, the production and sound are amazing, Greg Weeks’ guitar tone is remarkable - I need to ask him sometime how he gets that. In all, wonderful package.

Andrew’s $0.02: This song is terrific and well worth a reblog. Beautiful texture and the female vocals are like an alluring lullaby.

However, the main reason I wanted to reblog this is that Andy puts his finger on a phenomenon that often disappoints me as bands get success. I find the following trend all the time: Band records grungy muddy mess of greatness in their garage on cheap guitars and a couple of 4-track tape recorders linked together. Then Band strikes it big (likely via requisite Pitchfork “Best New Music” knighthood). Band goes out an buys a bunch of big fancy amps, new guitars, etc and the production quality on the recording gets kicked up a notch as they upgrade to a real studio and a brand name producer. Then, the resulting sophomore album sounds way to cleaned up and inorganic, and all the great, original raspy-sounding instruments are gone.

Based on this song, I don’t feel like that has happened to Espers, so that’s good. But, the trend is too common… I wish I could take some of my favorite bands and send them back through a time machine.

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