(2021) Jorge Elbrecht - Presentable Corpse 002


Review:
Jorge Elbrecht‘s long musical career is filled with many highlights, ranging from his work as a member of Violens to producing albums by No Joy and Tamayrn to writing songs for Aly & AJ. In the latter part of the 2010 and early 2020’s Elbrecht embarked on variety musical journeys into areas as diverse as experimental metal and dark wave. On his 2021 solo album Presentable Corpse 002 he explores ’60s psychedelic pop as filtered through the Paisley Underground and a reverb plate as big as a Winnebago. Most of the album sounds like the Three O’Clock playing in a wind tunnel, only without a single pitch perfect note or era-specific sound being lost in the headwind. The songs are wonderfully melodic and filled with both musical and vocal hooks. Elbrecht sings like he’s the most innocent of choir boys and plays almost all the instruments himself, adding so much 12-string jangle to the mix that even Roger McGuinn might look askance. There’s so much candy on the surface that it’s almost possible to miss the lyrical undercurrent. Elbrecht wrote the album from the perspective of a soldier in Vietnam and the songs deal with the horrors and frustrations of war, nostalgia for life back home, and hopes for escape. The opening “Blocking Out the Horror” lays the concept bare right away, wrapping some harrowing lyrics in a melody worth of the Turtles and swirling production that sounds like a cross between S.F. Sorrow-era Pretty Things and early Pink Floyd at their trippiest. This plays out all through the album as Elbrecht details some gnarly thoughts and emotions backed by some of the lushest, achingly pretty psych pop imaginable. The bright and sunny tracks like “This Time or Never” or the Zombies-like “The Clouds Are Gone” play well against quiet ballads (“Brittle Vines Break”) that sport minor key moodiness and a chance for beautiful vocal harmonies; the big sounding songs like “Fading Memory” that could fill a large club with echoing jangle match up nicely with intimate, dreamlike songs that have a big swath of melancholy running through the middle (“Pierced by the Ice”); and at least one song – the insanely chirpy bubblegum-meets-horror pop “Dawn is Creeping” – seems destined for a future Nuggets-style compilation of 2020’s psychedelia. Elbrecht nails the tricky conflict between lyrical darkness and musical light, and generally has made a record that should be in the collection of every fan of psych pop looking for something pleasingly retro and brightly modern at once. Not surprising considering the high level of his past work and an artist and producer, but stunning all the same.





Track Listing:
1.Blocking Out the Horror 03:25
2.This Time or Never 03:02
3.Tuesday Morning 04:13
4.Ancient Grief 03:17
5.The Clouds Are Gone 03:24
6.Brittle Vines Break 04:36
7.Fading Memory 03:27
8.Run & Hide 04:52
9.The Springtime Brigade 03:32
10.Dawn is Creeping 03:28
11.Leaf Cycle 02:57
12.Pierced by the Ice 03:40


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, indie-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits