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Tim Presley's White Fence - "I Have To Feed Larry's Hawk" | Album Review

tim presleys white fence cover.jpg

by Gianluigi Marsibilio (@GMarsibilio)

"Take time for yourself. I dare take some time for me”

Tim Presley spent four years composing I Have To Feed Larry's Hawk. In the past he has created a trait d’union with musicians like Ty Segall and Cate Le Bon, creating projects like Drinks. Time passed is a pot in which to find the basis for a sound search, which in this case has turned on and come to life in the new and beautiful album.

Delicate propulsions that are lost in changes of rhythm and guitars with graceful distortions, I Have To Feed Larry's Hawk is an Epicurean philosopher's record, in the sense that, not only is it thought but lived. The protagonist is a set of piano lines (perfectly designed by Le Bon) that seems to come out of a thriller by Dario Argento. The use of suspense, however, is not dedicated to scare the listeners but to create a sort of common thread that links the beginning, end, and every step of the work. The suspended and interspersed sounds as in "Phone" are a perfect example to explain exactly what it means to make a "thriller" record. Pianos and guitars as an emblem of the past, without having a pathological search for reversals: there is, in fact, no trace of nostalgia, but only a lot of intelligence in digging up and studying the past.

The record starts from a very instrumental and brave approach: there is an extreme courage of knowledge and wanting to choose, even by displacing. Key pieces to decode this attitude are "I Can Dream You" or "I Saw Snow Today". Presley's pop is impressionist, not academic, and rejects any pre-established style. There is a continuous flow of contemporaneity and a break with classicism that intersects with a thousand other styles, it's like being in front of a "Vase De Roses" by Chagall. To continue to use a pictorial/artistic parallelism, Tim Presley dialogues synchronously with David Hockney, but also with Delacroix. Symbols of academy and avant-garde are lost in a record studded with gems like "Lorelei" or "Fog City".

WIthin the album also emerges the side closest to the work with Drinks and we can find it in songs like "Neighborhood Light" or "Will you walk". I Have To Feed Larry's Hawk despite its learned and erudite influences, remains an immediate work and shows how in 2019 it is still possible to make a rock album, to be appreciated at every latitude of space-time. Another interesting element is the double personality of Presley, which is divided between White Fence and Tim: nevertheless, the feeling is in the record, perfectly able to have a functional mix of the two declinations of the personality of the artist.

In I Have To Feed Larry's Hawk there are the Beatles, Syd Barret, Velvet Underground, the brilliant guitars, the 60's, Ty Segall, and in general the basic precepts of being an artist in search. White Fence or Tim Presley, whatever you'd like to call it, has impressed in the record a historical, though not historicized sound.

The weight of history, the levity in reinventing it.