Mythical Motors drops lo-fi excellence
Listening to a new Mythical Motors release is a lot like finding a rare, vintage import tucked away in the back of a record shop. There is an initial joy of discovery—hey, something new!—swiftly followed by the realization that the album in your hands is something quite special.
Plenty of people, myself included, have spilled hundreds of words describing the sound of Mythical Motors. For brevity’s sake, we’ll leave the thesaurus on the shelf this time and just say that MM have mastered the art of retro New Wave power pop, similar to Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello, with the rawer edge those two well-known artists had lost by the time they hit mainstream success.
A garage band’s garage band (of a certain era), Mythical Motors has developed a reputation for short, punchy tunes with a hook. Truthfully, the hook is less often a part of the song than the entire song itself. Whatever label you want to hang on it, their music is catchy earworm material that will echo in your head long after the record is over.
Their latest effort, This Is What the Twilight Zone Was Preparing Us For, is scheduled for release by Fall Break records on September 20th. The album was engineered by Todd Tobias, of Guided by Voices fame. The addition of Tobias as engineer is a stroke of genius; his ability to coax the full richness of a recording without stepping on its minimalist approach goes hand in hand with MM’s vintage lo-fi approach.
Short song length means large track listing for Mythical Motors and This Is What the Twilight Zone Was Preparing Us For is no exception. With 22 tracks overall, the longest (“Go Outside and See”) weighs in at just over two minutes long; the shortest (“Ivy Sees You”) is a scant 19 seconds and were it not individually designated, might be considered an interstitial between tracks.
On the one hand, no one can ever accuse the band of the bloated, over-produced “one song is half an album long” tomfoolery of the early to mid-seventies.
On the other hand, the “punk rock” length of most of their tracks doesn’t leave a lot of room for analysis.
Maybe that’s the point, though; maybe these songs don’t require analysis. Maybe the point, after all, is to create a series of impressions that together create a mood, a tone, a feeling while the faux-deep messaging is best left to the “too serious” three chords and the truth set, feverishly scribbling away in their moleskins at the coffee shop.
There is no pretension in Mythical Motors, no latent desire to hide a new age manifesto in the lyrics of their songs. What you see is what you get, a highly skilled group of artists creating rock music for the sake of rock music, recording tunes that are just a pleasure to hear and enjoy without the need or desire to shoehorn in some ham-fisted philosophy.
Knowing the intelligence of the individuals in the group, there is no doubt any and all could explain at length their views on life, the universe, and everything, and perhaps they would, over a cold beer or two. What they will not do, however, is cram it down your ears, choosing to focus their energy instead on creating great music equally at home on stage, in the car, on the radio, or on the turntable.
This Is What the Twilight Zone Was Preparing Us For is the latest (and most impressive to date) example of Mythical Motors doing what they do best and if there’s any love in your heart for authentic, gritty, post-punk New Wave, you’re going to want this album.