Tulip Frenzy

If you followed the internals of the polling, did not try to skew them, but had a rationalist’s belief in data, by Election Day it would have been clear for all to see: Woods’ brilliant “Bend Beyond” was shooting up like a rocket en route to taking Tulip Frenzy’s Album of The Year, even beating out the great Ty Segall, who many people believed would be a lock.

But if the phrase, “Album of The Year,” has any meaning, of course it would go to Woods.  For Bend Beyond is an album that encapsulates all the musical goodness of 2012 — a glorious mix of garage rock, Byrdsy jangling, and smart songwriting — and is one of those records we’ll still be talking about ten years hence.

Here’s what we thought when we first heard it — and we should note, we’ve played it almost daily since then:

“Bend Beyond ranks in the Pantheon with Darker My Love’s Alive As You Are, John Hammond’s Southern Fried, Luna’s Penthouse, and The J. Geils Band.  You know where this is heading: yes, the declaration that Bend Beyond is a *perfect* record.  That’s right, perfect.  As we’ve commented before, perfect records are as rare as baseball pitchers’ perfect games.  (Even with that pronouncement, whether it will end up as Tulip Frenzy’s Album of the Year is not yet known, for as perfect as it may be, and it certainly is, the world has to account, and likely this year, for the greatness that is Ty Segall.  Does “World Historical” beat “perfect”?  We shall see.) [Editor’s note: And now we know.]

“Bend Beyond does something we never even considered possible, it is an expression beyond our previously far too limited imagination, for it melds the aforementioned folk-rock marriage between Neil Young and Galaxie 500 to farfisa-lubricated garage rock with ambient traces of psychedelic fireworks exploding softly on the edge of your vision.  Somehow, like a Ben’n’Jerry’s flavor combo moved to the realm of geographic mash-ups, we have achieved this brilliant union of Brooklyn with Woodstock with Topanga Canyon sliding in muddy goo right on top of it, and the tasty output, while perhaps a mite bit lacking in carnivorous gristle, is nourishing and fine.

“Go listen to “Find Them Empty” and tell me to my face that if it were slipped into a pail of nuggets taken from Lenny Kaye’s latest archaeological dig, you wouldn’t think it was the ’60s garage find o’ the year.

“Tell me — we dare ye — that if you heard “Cali In A Cup” while lying outside on an autumn sunny day, headphones on while you stared at that red leaf falling from a maple tree, you wouldn’t contemplate chucking it all to go work in some Williamsburg wine bar, dedicating your evenings to reading Richard Brautigan novels.

“Play “Is It Honest” loud from your Mustang while driving on Sunset Boulevard, and the remnants of the Paisley Underground would all march out with their hands up, their eyes blinking from behind Roger McGuinn half-shades.  ”Hey man, what is that?”

“It’s Woods’ Bend Beyond.

Like we said, a perfect album.”

And now it is Tulip Frenzy’s Album Of The Year.

This entry was posted on November 23, 2012 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Music with tags "Bend Beyond, Tulip Frenzy Album of The Year, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List, Woods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.