Mike Etten is a songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. One of the founders of the Brooklyn DIY venue and collective Le Wallet, Etten recorded and played in various experimental, chamber, punk and country projects throughout the last decade, including PC Worship, Ashcan Orchestra and Dougie Poole. Amidst extensive touring and performing, Etten started writing his long-awaited solo debut, Love Wash, a twisted slice of fringe Americana, composed of carefully crafted and self-recorded song experiments that are equally catchy and off-kilter.
Love Wash opens with “Across the Flats” and closes with its title track, both upbeat ballads that build from scorched drones into momentous sprawling pop songs that help ease in and out of the album, which features contributions from co-PC Worship collaborators (LEYA’s Adam Markiewicz on violin and NYC drum shredder Greg Fox). The second and third tracks “Drive” and “Saints” carry the subtle intensity that opens the album, with unpredictable instrumentation, chord changes and arrangements. This vibe is revisited later in the album on “Dune House” and “Hidden Away”, all of which are sonically rich, unraveling, dark, introspective and powerfully optimistic. The rest of Love Wash is comprised of catchy, borderline alt-country hits with a twisted Nashville tele vibe (“December Sun”, “New Thing” & “East Side Walk”), featuring pedal steel and vocal contributions from fellow Dougie Poole band members Tristan Shepherd and Francesca Caruso. Love Wash has a natural flow throughout, however the one real outlier is the well placed and hyper paced middle child of the album “Dredging Up Old Blues,” a schitzo-synth-pop Mountain Dew Rock jam that feels like buying trucker speed at a digital gas station in Middle-America.
Love Wash has echoes of an early post-Beatles solo record, recorded in the Northwest in the mid-90s; transient in its influences yet tied together with the aesthetic of its approach. Sequenced like the best, most damaged early K / Kill Rock Stars records and driven by fingerpicked acoustic guitar, sweeping drones, euphoric synths, lush vocals and soaring Dead Man leads, Love Wash is a beautifully rich pop record at its core and an ambitious journey of an album that started as bedroom demos and evolved into a layered studio exploration.
-- Justin Frye
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Drive was inspired by a late night trip down a country back road, touching dark memories of that ride and wrong turns made in the past. The tune starts with a simple guitar figure that unfolds and winds its way through changes, with a mix of percussion and drum machines bouncing around it. It felt like it lent itself to pedal steel, so I asked Tristan Shepherd (Dougie Poole band) to put down some tremolo-y tracks and a wild fuzzed out solo in the middle that really gave this one its character. I improvised a lead synth track that I really like too, it has that first-take spontaneity which I tried to capture whenever I could through the whole recording process. Drive feels full of confusion and hope at the same time, with me trying to move towards a more peaceful station, a more loving vision, and accepting that chaos can always be around the next corner.
lyrics
Had a bit too much, slow it down, let me sort it through a screen
Someone warm and light, tiptoes out, over a horizon line
So swing
You hinted at, you winked your eyes, grabbed my arm and wondered how to die
Never really in doubt, I’m knockin’ on the walls so climb, with me
The car is parked in back, you filled your gas, to take you on a ride tonight
The air above is drained, the streets are flooded, filled with broken glass so go
Just drive
It’s 3 o’clock, you’re almost home, make your turn and ride off the road
Stretch out and lean, won’t stop until you touch them all
Smoke the last you’ve got, and hold your secret, maybe you should share a few
A songbird sings in your yard, it’s fine like that, making it’s home to show
So fly
Fire is lit, why not
I’ve seen my thoughts in knots
Well untie your mind
Never really in doubt, I’m climbing up the walls, ashore
credits
from Love Wash,
released October 1, 2021
Tristan Shepherd -- pedal steel
A gorgeous, earnest album that plays like Roy Orbison and The Boss on diazepam. Rolls from my heart direct to Magic Mountain's Rio Grande... woe_bonnet
Avi Buffalo had a hand in producing this cassette of Lowpines' serene, self-described "Lo-fi-Anglo-Americana pop songs." Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 28, 2016
Banjo-wielding indie folk outfit drop their fourth full-length studio album of broody ballads and barroom stompers. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 13, 2014
I listen to this album and pretend like I'm pulling the arm of a cardboard-construction progressive slot machine in the back corner of an empty pole barn. Every pull's a winner, but the paper coin jackpots just get blown around by an always-on industrial fan left behind by the previous tenants. woe_bonnet
