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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You’re waiting on a cosmic slide (sun up, or one up)
Got held up in a long line (in shallows you follow)
An automatic rush four five
God I need a warning sign
Got bent up looking half right (like wings of an insect)
Got stuck up on a wishing side (strike out, and wait out)
You’ve hung your head a thousand times
God I want a new night life
Deep sun, catch the light, let my mind touch everyone i know
Whatever name you please you use (Mikel, or Michel)
It’s day to day like all the news (your body is leaving)
Communication wears on you
God i dread the morning time
You could’ve asked a question or two (wide eyed and parted) The manager is waiting to be paid
Along with priests and deacons of his court
You see the humor in it, true (a needle you planted)
A figure of some speech you knew
Is clouding up your morning mind
Deep sun, catch the light, let my mind touch everyone i know
Pour another one on cue (flickering of candles out)
now we’ve got something to do (don’t know what to do without)
Now I see you’re laughing too (joke has gotten played out now)
what on earth is really really true
Hidden away, hidden from today
Picking out the glass, to hang up on your doorframe
You’re not lost, not like the brother that you bore
No no no, walking down my road
Hidden away, hidden from today, hidden away now
You’re waitin on a cosmic slide (sun up or one up)
Got held up in a long line (in shallows, you follow)
An automatic rush four five (ticking away)
God i need a warning sign (ticking away)
God i dread the morning time (ticking away)
God i need a warning sign (ticking away)
God I dread the morning time (ticking away)
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