The Blank Tapes: Candy
With the sweetly titled Candy, The Blank Tapes have just dropped their 18th release. Ideally, close your eyes under those shades, sip on something sweet and boozy, step into a sunbeam and put Candy on your stereo. If it's going to feel like southern California on the inside , it might as well sound like it too.
Multi -instrumentalist/singer songwriter Matt Adams is the kind of Californian that oozes and permeates the quintessential spirit of his native land. The Blank Tapes have over the course of 13 years, through various labels including Burger Records, Antenna Farm,White Noise, Royal Oakey and Volcom, have proven their catalogue as an essential addition to the modern tapestry of California music.
These songs are created with lazy days, longing hearts, fuzzy minds and salt licked skin in mind. On the first song we are welcomed to Paradise, and there's no going back. A breezy strummer that builds into a euphoric chorus edging for a place to be the first song of summer on the road trip playlist. To sound "quintessentially Californian" without falling into tropes of that very longstanding sound is easily achieved throughout Candy. Harmonies uplift, organs, and keys, hit like rays of sun, while guitar solo's hit all the sweet spots without ever dragging the songs back into the abyss. Let Yourself Get Down is a pot smoking anthem about that guy, we all know in some form or another, the one with the best weed who makes his own lemonade and wants everyone to have some.
Hot and hazy afternoons can easily be spent laying away listening to Candy's slow burners. Feels Like Summer is a song about grasping onto the good times, before they're gone, before they have even begun. It's dripping with hushed sweetness, syrup being poured into the lemonade. Thinking About You hits all the necessary minor chords and jangles it's way as one of the sweetest spots on the album. Title track Candy is the obvious single with hints of The Band and The Travelling Willbury's, the verses crawl slowly forward with the sweet side effects of love before standing tall for the chorus, switching out the sky for a bigger pond as a means for Candy to be free. The guitar and piano anchor into your heart until the outro guitar solo breaks from the tethers. Other Places is the seven and a half minute cosmic burner, no mind-altered fan should be without.
This album has been playing a lot from these speakers lately and as any great album does, it has sent be diving back into The Blank Tapes extensive back catalogue.
You can pick up The Blank Tapes Candy here.