Tulip Frenzy

The fundamental dilemma of Tim Presley’s White Fence was solved, as we discovered, when you got the guy out of his apartment and onto a stage with a killer live band.  No more soft and ethereal vocals, no more wispy guitars weaving in and out like Casper The Friendly Ghost.  Instead, the kind of straight-ahead rock we’ve yearned for from an artist, who with Darker My Love, and then Ty Segall, has ranked in our Top Three twice in the past four years, and lives on to fight from the #9 spot this year.

When Live In San Francisco came out last month, we said:

“It is one of the hardest, bossest punk-meets-Byrds-in-Andy-Warhol’s Factory documents that you will ever hear.  Ever.  Great bashing drummer, multiple guitars, Presley singing into the microphone like he means it, it contains none of the fey and tentative, dreamy pop chops that the prior White Fence albums have.  ”Pink Gorilla,” which was one of the best songs on Cyclops Reap, is magical, as is the other song from that album, “Chairs In The Dark.”  ”Harness” is such gob-flying late ’70s British punk, you can imagine Fred Armisen playing on it.  So of course the Great Man of the Epoch, Thee Oh See’s John Dyer is a prime mover behind the release, and we can only imagine his no B.S. admonition to Presley: Tim, get out of the house and play these songs with a real band.”

We called it the Punk Rock Album Of The Year, but what we really meant was it was Number 9, Number 9, Number 9…

This entry was posted on December 8, 2013 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Music with tags "Live In San Francisco", The Tulip Frenzy 2013 Top 10 List, Tim Presley, Top Ten List 2013, White Fence. 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.