Track Of The Day BUDDHIST BUBBLEGUM
Just in the week in which it was released, properly in the middle of summer, the new ‘so so’ album from Washed-Out, quite dream pop and rarefied for the truth, has debuted with the single, “Buddhist Bubblegum / Merry-Go-Round”, an elusive indie music project likely led by Wiktor Szotowski, called Buddhist Bubblegum based in Ljubljana, Slovenia that tags itself, by the way, as hypnagogic pop.
Perhaps a more appropriate definition for the self/titled warbling and swirling hypnotic lo-fi electronic jam, but what interests us most is the flip “Merry-Go-Round”, a little jingle-jangle gem, a sunburnt coloured postcard of summer memories laced with 60s suggestions, bursting with striking ringing guitar progressions, that recall the late ’80s timeless melodies of Brit forebears The La’s “There she goes”.
Crystal clear jangly arpeggios, shimmering and airy at the same time, drag relentlessly through subtle alterations in circular rhythms of warm pin-point bass pulses, jaunty drum beats and dry handclaps, swirling around bright high and low male vocals dreaming dearly in bittersweet memory bliss, wrapped in nostalgic perpetual chiming hooks.
Songs like “Merry-Go-Round” struck very intimately familiar musical chords, imbued with that timeless pop magic that lingers within some of us forever, starting with the Beatles, the Kinks, the Velvets, Love, Big Star, and that it reincarnates endlessly in always new forms yet, somehow, always the same.
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