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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Saints was written early one morning in a bit of a blur, strumming a chord progression in 3/4 time and singing a melody and words that wrote themselves pretty quickly. I built up the arrangement around the guitar and vocal, first adding drums and then synths that play a weaving counter line. Francesca Caruso added a vocal harmony and Adam Markiewicz (LEYA) layered a violin part based on a melody I sang to him, recorded at his home studio in Ridgewood. The bridge goes into a more ecstatic heavy waltz, it comes back around for a final verse, and feels like by the end of this one I’ve communed a little with myself, people from my past, and maybe a spirit or two from some other life.
lyrics
A rogue, who didn’t have the time
To talk to his own
Beat up and carved out of stone
You’re lost, stuck, runnin’ in the wild
Heed all the warning shots and stay on your own
A life, short, lived it like a war
It’s not as simple as swords
They danced, and they danced, all in a row
A perfectly silent tune drowned out the notes that you
Played in your head
So bum, ba-ba-bah bum
A saint, whose body got twisted and shrank
The shadow won’t leave you alone
The eyes, with no whites
Filled up and cried
When happiness came your way, the thorn and the rose you take
Will leave you feelin’ cold
So bum, ba-ba-bah-bah
Well child, won’t you dine
And leave all the wants you had and come back home
Well by the time it’s done
You’ve drunk all the wine
You’ve sung all the songs you know
Once, twice and more
I’ve got a lot in store, for dreams, anchored and hooked to your soul
So bum, ba-ba-bah-bah
A girl, so pale, traveling in air
Spaces got shifted and tear
You hang, in your cave
Waitin’ for the mail
To bring you the news of flight and let down your veil
A message, delivered
Numbness made you blindddd (v)
A perfectly silent tune drowned out the notes that you
Played in your head … so bum, ba-ba-bah-bah
credits
from Love Wash,
released October 1, 2021
Adam Markiewicz -- violin
Francesca Caruso -- vox harmony
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
