Gentle Friendly hail from London, but their sound is distinctly American, suggesting at varying moments No Age's noisy minimalism, Animal Collective's hazy head trips, Liars' percussive clatter and The Mae Shi's synthy spaz-outs. Released stateside last month to scant American press, the duo's debut album Ride Slow is like an Easter basket so generously overstuffed with penny candy and drug store chocolate that at first it's easy not to notice there are a handful of giant Godiva bars in there, too.
Ride Slow's 15 tracks whiz by in a scant 34-minutes, almost all of them amicably, but a few leave a particular impression, like the MGMT-esque daydream "Lovers Rock":
"Real Fighters," meanwhile, accomplishes the task of condensing Animal Collective's entire Strawberry Jam album into less than 90 seconds:
Though there's a demo-esque quality to the record, both in its lo-fi aesthetics and its seemingly insouciant hit-to-miss ratio, Ride Slow is deceptively cohesive, sequenced to maintain momentum throughout. Even its misfires are purposeful, serving as needed palette cleansers between the record's hooky nuggets. The record could be the work of a band destined for greater things, a blueprint they may one day refine into a bona fide psych-pop masterpiece, though the record could just as easily be the work of a band perfectly content where they area template for several more records every bit as agreeably ramshackle. Either way, it's a win-win proposition.
