California may not be as inexorably linked to surf music as it was before the collapse of The Beach Boys but tenuous threads still connect the waves with the Golden State. The Botticellis’ debut, aptly titled Old Home Movies, is a shimmering analog paean to sun-bleached daydreaming. And like those Super 8 movies your parents dust off, the grainy pictures blur at the edges. Movies was recorded at Tiny Telephone at at the ensemble’s communal home in the foggy Outer Richmond district in San Francisco. Guest musicians include violinist Anton Patzner (Bright Eyes) and Jason Quever (Papercuts), who played drums on one song and helped the band commit the album to analog tape.
The Botticelli’s artistic decision to dip heavily in the sounds of ‘60s surf music doesn’t lessen their contemporary thrust. Old Home Movies skirts a sticky nostalgic mire by asserting The Botticellis as a mature band, perfectly adept at both pastiche and melody.
Botticelli means “little barrel,” a surf term Zack Ehrlich (drums) and Alexi Glickman (lead songwriter/vocalist) started using as kids for their favorite California wave. As an aural equivalent, the lovely title the lovely title track’s hypnotic Vox Continental’s drone pulls you in like the vein of a big roiling wave. ‘When I Call’ vies for the darker veneer of a chamber orchestra. The surf guitar recalls the work of landlocked surf rockers, Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet. Movies is out on Antenna Farm Records May 13. It took four years of painstaking cultivation, and it shows. Beneath all the reedy organs and reverb is a beautifully subtle debut.
mp3:> The Botticellis: ‘Old Home Movies’
mp3:> The Botticellis: ‘Up Against The Glass’
Links
The Botticellis [official site] [myspace]
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