by Delia Rainey (@hellodeliaaaaa)
There’s a shivering thrill in witnessing a shooting star; lying on your back or craning your neck, waiting for a fiery tail to streak across the dark ceiling above. Celestial views provide reminders that we have no control over the environment, and hence no control over ourselves: “what will become of me and you?”
On their new album Soul Chateau, Dimples’ often defines the experience of looking at natural phenomenons. The songs dip listeners into a blue pool of vibration, guitar twangs and a creeping beat. Where “the night is young and the road bends,” Dimples’ psychedelic obscure-rock compositions give dusty and warbling landscapes, narrated by soft veiled voices in calm existentialism.
Dimples’ is Greg Hartunian and Colby Nathan, two long-distance friends splitting their parts in experimental instrumentation, production, and recording. Hartunian lives in Glendale, Southern California and runs Tropico Beauty recording studio, while Nathan lives in South Portland, Maine, where he runs his small label Laughable Recordings and home studio. Laughable Recordings put out Soul Chateau and the previous two Dimples’ records. Nathan describes the label as both a “dumping grounds” and a “vanity label” for his bands like Dimples’ and other collaborations.
While Dimples’ beginnings are unknown to me, I can assume an image of Hartunian and Nathan improvising and jamming around until a sparking becomes unearthed. Their 2016 album Obsessional Dream busted out twenty crunchy tunes as a variety show of experimentations and moods, while 2017‘s Whimpers holds a closer and cleaner similarity to their current sound: a soundtrack for a stoned camping trip or an avant garde western film.
If any specific Dimples’ album needs further explanation, check the vibe of the album art, each one a unique painting by Salvador Charlí (Hartunian’s artiste persona). The colorful and strikingly odd folk art matches the music’s simple yet mystifying affect: Obsessional Dream has a lone country music or karaoke singer with golden hair, and Whimpers’ showcases square-dancers on a checkered floor in the middle of the desert, where old people are being lifted up into the soul-dashed sky by aliens in flying saucers.
Laughable Recordings co-released Soul Chateau with Feeding Tube Records, putting out a limited edition vinyl with more special oil paintings by Salvador Charlí on the back, cover, and inner sleeve of the LP. Glancing at the cover art for Soul Chateau, two men in white hoodless hazmat suits pick at a feast of stacked cakes, fruits, meats, and lobsters. Beyond them, a bay window reveals mountains and hills dotted with cows, and a night sky and cloudy sky seem to be painted on the ceiling of the painted room. This is how Soul Chateau differs from previous examples of Dimples’ work: with perspective and depth, the gathering of details draws a quiet curiosity.
Much of the woozy album is delivered by hypnotic layered vocals, like a poem or slow sizzling chant. In “Bad Class,” aphorisms are stated in a loop: “There’s no waste, only composition. There’s no time, only transition.” Other instrumentation joins the dream pit, only to be determined by imagination: frazzled saxophone, bells or keyboard, haunting bass and guitar repetition, and small buzzings of percussion pieces.
The thirteen tracks all feel like an accumulation, adding to the same jam session “under the spell” of a long evening. Moods often shift: “Displacement Yawn” begins in naive dry boredom, slurring into a more sinister desert mirage. “Hominy Dream” is like a sluggish singalong, the word “hominy” melting into harmony. “Pink Fortune” has a more relaxing poolside feeling, its title sung as a revelation after the chanted story. Dimples’ lyrics are often just as playful as they are trippy: “tears like worms wiggle down your cheek.”
When Soul Chateau transitions into new worlds within one song, the complexity feels both otherworldly and earthly. “Nothing But Time” begins in ambient fragments gliding into each other, making me retrieve a sonic past memory of a solar system exhibit at the science center. Then the vocals and snarling guitar dive in front of the sounds, entering through like saloon doors wide open. “Nothing But Time” has the most feel-good rock/pop structure of the album, discussing the wisdom of acceptance of time, or mortality, and finding freedom in taking it slow: “ain’t no rush” / “giddy up.”
Under this confession of meandering, the rest of Dimples’ canyon-gazing album Soul Chateau keeps going and going, with no desire for linear thought or traditional form. Dimples’ songs can be weirdly soothing, inside of Greg Hartunian and Colby Nathan’s impressive instrumental guidance. A simple statement, “I know my life ain’t nothing but time,” swallows into the vastness of the grand earth.