by Anna Solomon (@chateau.fiasco)
Dead Currencies is a small label based out of Nashville that focuses on extremely limited runs of its releases, generally only 25 copies. On September 1st, they’ll be releasing the compilation El Teatro Esta Cerrado (Spanish for The Theater Is Closed) to celebrate their first year in business. It will be available on all digital platforms with a characteristically small batch of tapes and 7-inch singles for the collectors. Across thirteen songs and running nearly an hour, the comp explores indie, punk, folk, jazz, and all sorts of strange and doomy sounds, including “Drive Up Drive Through Solitude,” by the LA-based psych duo Monde UFO.
In some ways “Drive Up Drive Through Solitude” feels like if “Paperback Writer” was a slacker rock track. Every element is hard panned for the 60s feel, including guitars that are barely tuned and a drum kit that can’t have more than three mics on it. The vocal is mostly monotone, the lead guitar isn’t really in any key or scale, and what little synths there are sound like dated sci-fi sound effects. To say it sounds dead is to miss the point. It sounds undead, really. It’s classic rock that couldn’t have come from the 60s, or maybe even this planet.