Sharp Pins: Balloon Balloon Balloon

In my review of Kai Slater’s primary band, Lifeguard, I mentioned Guided by Voices. Not because that indie rock band full of teens necessarily sounds like GBV, but just gave that energy. But here, with his Sharp Pins side project, Slater has gone full Robert Pollard. When he isn’t going full Beatles. Complete with the lo-fi production, faux British accent and loose, jangling instrumentation he has put together an incredible facsimile of this Bee Thousand era meets something that sounds an awful lot like an Elephant 6 recording session outtake. Even the album cover looks like his attempt to get in with Apples in Stereo or something.

But, yeah, there is nothing even remotely modern about this record. And I’m a little unclear how to feel about this. It’s as if Slater took a bunch of his grandparent’s LPs and his dad’s CDs from the 90s lo-fi movement and just mashed it all up into this kind of half-finished recording of charming, but fragmented songs. And damn if I don’t feel a little taken advantage of. Like he created this record just to troll those of us who heard The Minders and their brethren and figured this was as far as indie’s Beatle fanaticism could take us. But, no, this kid — and he is a kid — has decided he’s just going to resurrect the whole thing in some sort of third-wave Beatlemania. In this rambling 21-track record filled with what can only be called ditties. An old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned album. Just a fanciful endeavor filled with sunny tunes buried in layers of hiss and gentle psychedelia.

I think the whole undertaking is pretty ballsy, honestly. To stand up and, as a 20-year-old musician, say I’m just going to record what amounts to a tribute album to a genre of music that I’m not sure was ever cool, but is clearly a passion of his. Because we already know he can do the post-punk thing with his other band — a sound that still has at least some resonance in today’s landscape — but this all just hits different. It’s not like anything else coming out in this modern era. Even GBV — some 42 albums in — has modernized their sound beyond this Fab Four idolization and mop-topped bops. Minor chords and distortion pedals! Anyhow, with the length of this record, there is a lot to absorb. And most of it is incredibly catchy and nostalgic — even if most of my nostalgic feelings lie in the second-wave version of this music. I’m not certain that his variety will catch on, though it’s clear that he has a ton of talent, can write a hook and has a very dialed-in sense of himself and his music. I’ll be curious to see if his next Sharp Pins record (this is somehow his third album) continues in this vein, or if he explores another genre all together. He strikes me as a bit of a musical chameleon based solely on the two projects I’ve seen him helm, but perhaps he’s just an old soul and this will be his direction now and forever.