Albums of The Year # 65 Paint - Spiritual Vegas

 

I'm pretty much a sucker for whatever trots out of The Allah Las stable. They're one of the most distinctive bands going. Not that there aren't any other similar groups out there, there are possibly far too many, but everything that any one of these Californian hippie slackers puts out seems to be distinctively theirs.

One of the offshoot projects they indulge in is PAINT, which customarily allows lead guitarist Pedrum Siadatian to truly unleash his inner '66 West Coast love child. Not a million miles away from what the Las do anyway but so determinedly laidback and gently frazzled in this case  it's almost horizontal. As if Syd Barrett and Skip Spence had paired up inadvisably in the late Sixties.

There's very little on PAINT's latest Spiritual Vegas, that you might call essential really. At least on the surface. It's all far too self-consciously, almost artfully throwaway for that. Each of the sixteen tracks here is come and gone before you know it.

That doesn't mean there isn't quite a lot worthy of a second glance. Quite the opposite really. It's highly more-ish for fans of these things. Some things really stand out. Land Man for example has already been posted on my end of year run down list.

Siadatian is a considerable talent, even though he is far too self effacing to present himself as such. Several of the songs on Spiritual Vegas would easily grace an Allah Las album.I'm curious to see how much I come back to this despite the fact that it seems uneccesarily to draw its own disposability. I supect it's actually more accomplished than that. Only repeated plays will tell.

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