Take a listen to “It Won’t Hurt You” off the Triptides’ new album Alter Echoes and you’re sure to feel free as a bird flying eight miles high over the Sunset Strip that is until your strawberry colored alarm clock wakes you from your slumber and you rise from your mushroom-imprinted pillow to face another rainy day.
While I can’t say for sure if that’s a Rickenbacker guitar being played on the track it sure as heck sounds like it (note: now confirmed to be a Ric 360!) and either way these Angelinos have captured a certain classic LA World vibe and sound on the entire album that would no doubt have Russ Meyer salivating all over his ascot to hire these boys as the house band for the Hollywood bungalow party scene in his new movie titled The Immortal Pussycat Beyond the Motorpsycho Valley of the Mudhoney Vixens Kill Kill! were he not a long dead mazophiliac.
So, not to dwell on this one song but it’s also got bongos, or congas at least, and about 25 seconds into the thing a maraca and a guitar countermelody enter simultaneously with some sweet stereo separation and really the album is chock full of these nice arranging and production touches so you can use it to show off your hi-fi system to your honey and everybody wins.
For example you’ll hear the old we trick of feeding a vocal part through a Leslie speaker on “Do You Ever Wonder?” and then a little later the sudden transition to a half-time Floydian blissed out freakout towards the end of “Let It Go” which then reverts back to its original upbeat jingle-jangle by its conclusion and also there’s the day-glo smeared psychedelic coda to “Hand of Time” which is groovy too.
On its back half the album mellows out significantly (but what so you expect from the B-side) before the Triptides decide to end things on an up note with the frug-ready “Now and Then” sending their more dance-inclined patrons home happy. So hey, if any of this sounds appealing the Deli says ch-check it out! (Jason Lee)