The Beets - Stay Home (Captured Tracks)
Even though the band themselves deny it, chalking it up to pure coincidence, I prefer to think that these guys really are named for the fictional Beatles knock-off from the criminally underrated Nickelodeon animated show, Doug. And for all I knew when I originally approached Stay Home, they could have actually been that very same band. Increasingly a rarity in these days of RSS feeds, blogs, and Twitter, I came into this record completely ignorant of The Beets or what they sounded like. While I was on the Captured Tracks site awhile back, ordering the recent Minks (more on that particular record later) and Soft Moon records, I threw this one into my cart for the hell of it, knowing that this label has been on such a roll lately that this album had to be worth hearing as well.
The charmingly off-putting cover art, looking almost exactly like the type of margin doodles a particularly odd former classmate of mine used to draw during architectural history lectures, keyed me in early on The Beets' sense of humor. Stay Home consists of thirteen tracks that I can only describe as garage-folk played with cheerful abandon. At first blush, this New York City band's sound is deceptively lo-fi, sounding like an infinite number of artists recording delightful pop tunes in garages and bedrooms the world over. But several songs in, one notices that its really only the vocals that sound recorded on the trusty 4-track. The guitars and drums reveal themselves to be crisp and clear, particularly the latter, even as they pound out reckless rhythms. Such a simple formula seems destined to wear itself thin over the course of thirty minutes, but it's surprising how much they wrangle out of so little. Ranging from tossed off silliness ("Flaxing Seed") to hummable pop nuggets ("Knock On Wood"), The Beets have no trouble drawing you into their insular world. A world that is expertly summed up by the song "Let It Dim", ostensibly a nod to the Beatles and Stones songs that are a clear influence, but with a shut-in's sense of dark humor that ties the record's theme to the goofy cover art. These guys aren't shying away from their fair share of fun, but damned if they'll leave their couches to find it. A charming and replayable album that has me thrilled at still being able to pull off a blind listen in 2011 and coming away with a winner. You should try it sometime.
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