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July 11, 2005
It's beyond me what a girl can see
Rusty Santos - This Direction
Rusty Santos, who I've written about previously, has a knack for writing oddly-arranged but perfect little pop songs. So many of the tracks on "The Heavens", Rusty's most recent LP, have that tossed-off and effortless feel- as if Santos rented a practice space in the city for a day on a whim, brought in his friend Dave Portner to help with production, and sat down and just recorded a great album. No rehearsal, just some loose ideas bouncing around and caught on tape. But even though the songs feel spur-of-the-moment, this music is obviously very well thought-out and polished.
'This Direction' is the best example of what I'm talking about. Besides having one of the strongest melodies on the album, 'This Direction' also sports one of the most interesting arrangements: starting off with a simple interval progression on acoustic guitar, and mouth-percussion (kind of a punched-in-the-stomach grunt from Rusty), it really breaks out when the drums start kicking and Santos sings his first lines in a tone that sounds like he's giving some much-needed and frank advice to a friend. And let me say that there is something intrinsically exciting about someone playing the living shit out of their acoustic guitar, as if they're wringing the song out of the instrument itself, where it was previously held captive (viz. the Microphones 'I Felt Your Shape').
"The Heavens" is available right here, and word is (via the very nice and knowledgable Rob Catsupplate, who just helped re-design the Animal Collective website into something gorgeous) that Rusty is working on another album, to be released in the near future. R.S. used to have a website over at www.rustysantos.net, but it looks like that's gone for the time being.
Posted by Kevin at July 11, 2005 07:33 AM
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