-=- SHGZ -=- * Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal * ARTIST..: Joy Zipper ALBUM...: American Whip GENRE...: Indie STYLE...: Dream Pop, Twee Pop, Indie Pop, Neo-Psychedelia, Indie Rock RETAIL..: 2004-04-27 LABEL...: Vertigo COUNTRY.: USA FORMED..: New York City, NY ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V0 BITRATE.: 245 kbps avg QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo SOURCE..: CD TRACKS..: 12 SIZE....: 76.01 MB URL..: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Whip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Zipper https://www.popmatters.com/joyzipper-american-2495949741.html https://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/joy-zipper-american-whip https://www.discogs.com/release/1391951-Joy-Zipper-American-Whip https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/joy-zipper/american-whip https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/5f3n - TRACKLIST 1 Sunstroke 0:59 2 Christmas Song 3:38 3 Baby You Should Know 4:31 4 33x 3:25 5 Out Of The Sun 4:28 6 Drugs 0:24 7 Dosed And Became Invisible 4:16 8 Alzheimers 4:32 9 Ron 3:36 10 In The Never Ending Search For A 6:18 Suitable Enemy 11 VSX 0:52 12 Valley Stream 4:34 Total Playtime: 41:33 Vinny Cafiso could've had a lucrative career as a crime boss on the strength of his name alone. He opted into music instead, currently playing in dream-pop act Joy Zipper with long-term S.O. Tabitha Tindale. The duo's sophomore album, American Whip, has been out in England since last year, accumulating predictable comparisons to Brian Wilson, My Bloody Valentine (a given-- Kevin Shields helped mix a few tracks, and his big neon fingerprints are all over it), and Air. These takes are understandable: This particular strain of dreamy shoegaze is pure surface and form, and trying to write about it can be like trying to review a cloud: Does it look like an ice-cream cone or a mermaid? Does it matter? There's barely time to name its shape before the wind changes it again, and no matter what it looks like, it's only eddying mist. American Whip is engaging and sharply-drawn-- a spun-sugar confection of pale pinks and lemony yellows, oversaturated harmonies and gently whirring guitars, layers of liquid drone, the saccharine punch of outsized strings and horns. On "Christmas Song", humming organ sunrises backlight translucent clouds of guitar, slashed with deep auburn wounds by the huge, breathy harmonies. "33x" finds Tindale doing her cute robot number over mournful slides and drenched chamber strings, and "Out of the Sun" is a kicky little psych-pop smokeout with a deliriously stacked vocal chorus. If American Whip makes you viscerally confront your mortality, you're probably looking too closely, like peering at a Monet from inches away when just standing back to enjoy the tableau is the more appropriate response. * - Charming melodies, heart-melting harmonies and hazy lo-fi guitars distil into an... - In 2003, Ministry of Sound pulled the financial rug from under the feet of their tributary 13 Amp label, indefinitely suspending the release of Joy Zipper's American Whip. Fifteen months on, the Long Island duo's second album has finally been saved from obscurity. And about time, too. Joy Zipper are Tabitha Tindale and Vincent Cafiso. Named after Tabitha's mum, they've been a couple for around ten years, which might explain the gooey sentimentality that occasionally graces their work. Essentially, the Joy Zipper sound hasn't deviated much from that of their eponymous debut album in 2000. Their charming melodies, heart-melting harmonies and hazy lo-fi guitars distil into an intoxicating alt-pop nectar. But, underneath the saccharine My Bloody Valentine-style orchestration lies a darker underbelly; at times, Tindale's voice entices with the bittersweet allure of a Siren's song. On the blissful "33x", for instance, she sings 'I'm getting tired of life' with all the innocent charm of a nursery rhyme. American Whip tells tales of infatuation, drugs, making enemies and, strangely, mental disorders (see the eerie "Alzheimer's"). It seems the duo's intriguing mix of sweet and sinister is the result of a blossoming song writing partnership. "I tend to write more of the poppier things, I think that's in my nature", Tindale reveals. "Vinny writes more of the cerebral, weird things. Combined together, that's why it works, that's why we're Joy Zipper." It's certainly an irresistible combination. "Baby You Should Know", "Ron" and "Out Of the Sun" all feature mesmerizing choruses that'll have you grinning like a child. Out of twelve songs, however, three fall short of a minute long, making American Whip disappointingly short. Consequently, you wouldn't want to set it to repeat play; it's a bit like hot chocolate with marshmallow: nice, but a little sickly after several mugs. That said, it remains an enchanting and comforting record that should keep you warm 'til summer. * When I was little I arbitrarily liked the Beach Boys. I admired Good Vibrations but wasn t sure why. I d never heard Pet Sounds, and when I finally did, I just couldn t get it. So it s telling that it took several listens for me to warm up to Joy Zipper s music. Originally slated for release in 03 before being shelved due to the usual label politicking, and then released internationally last year, the Long Island-based couple s sophomore effort, American Whip, is finally getting a stateside release in 05. The duo s stylish, baroque pop can be traced back to myriads of influences, but it s the psychedelic samples, live strings, sun-soaked harmonies, and crisscrossing vocal parts that are most prominent, recalling the Byrds and, yes, the Beach Boys seminal 1966 album. Of course, other, more modern influences can be found in American Whip s rush of static-y guitars (My Bloody Valentine) and quiet electronic drones (David Holmes, who co-produced four tracks here, and Air). And speaking of Air, Joy Zipper s 33x could have been Lux Lisbon s theme song in The Virgin Suicides like much of the album, the song questions death and the meaning of physical life in particular: Pulled back my skin and found a mannequin/If I m straight like a line then I am dying (they go on to use the word mannequin again on the very next track, Out Of The Sun, this time as an adjective). It s this juxtaposition of probing, melancholy lyrics and sprightly background music that makes American Whip so entrancing. Dip your toes beneath the glistening atmospheres of tracks like Valley Stream and In The Never Ending Search For A Suitable Enemy and you ll find songs about madness, drugs, mental deterioration, and death. Brian Wilson should be proud. * It's important to be totally honest with you, Dear Reader. So I feel I must share one of the most reliable crutches we who review records rely upon to keep us sane, employed, and on deadline: The Grand Invocation. There are artists who, when mentioned, instantly do most of the writing for you. Bob Dylan is one such artist. Drop the word "Dylan-esque" into a review, and the rest could be in Swahili; no one would care. The impression of the record would be instantly and easily understood. Other Grand Invocations: Bruce Springsteen, the Sex Pistols, and Nirvana. I'm reminded of this crutch by reading the stickers on the cover of Joy Zipper's sophomore album, American Whip. Three of the four blurbs from esteemed British music rags mention artists that Joy Zipper are reminiscent of; two of the four mention either the Beach Boys or Brian Wilson. Brian Wilson is one of the biggest, baddest, bestest critical crutches in the record writer arsenal. Those are two little words that can turn a torturous slog through 450 words about a so-so record into a quick half-hour of typing before Wheel of Fortune comes on. Yes, the Joy Zipper album is Wilson-esque in select spots, but that is not all. It's too morose to live up to the Wilson tag, for one thing; there's joy in this record, but nothing ebullient. American Whip is also not as densely layered as Wilson's most successful work. A fairer description would be to say that American Whip is orchestral in spots, poppy in others, and all around a great little record. There's something pretty but distant about the best moments on this album. That's not Wilson-esque, either. Pet Sounds is beautiful, like the love of your life brushing her arm against yours, and American Whip is further away. It doesn't come to you; you have to reach for it. As I type this, I'm listening again to the final track on the record, "Vally Stream," and one-half of Joy Zipper, Vincent Cafiso, is singing quietly, "You're the moon and I'm the sun " The words are sort of shimmering in the air around my cheap office boombox, and it's like I'm looking at someone beautiful walking down the street, close enough to appreciate but too distant to savor. I'm wondering what the song's past is, what its future might be, where the tune is going and where it's been. I'm curious to know everything about it, but I know I'll never know. So I'm listening at it, staring at it, thinking about it in a dreamy way, but not dreaming about it. I guess what I'm saying is that this is a record you'll develop a crush on. You'll write notes about it in the margins of your papers at school, you'll talk endlessly to your friends about it, and you'll wonder what it's doing at any given moment throughout the day. If it's got a flaw, it's that it may be a little too far away, but so is the sun, and it'll still burn your eyes if you stare long enough. * Ah, couples in bands. From the 70s AOR nightmare of Wings to the more credible strains of Sonic Youth, the conceit of an outfit featuring at least two people shagging each other has held the appeal of many a hack. Mercifully, perhaps, Joy Zipper have more in common with the latter of the bands mentioned above, more so then their shared New York roots. Vinny Cafiso and Tabitha Tindale may well have passed under this particular pop periscope since their 2000 debut, but American Whip more than makes up for lost time. This is no small part to the extracted single Baby You Should Know, a wonderfully murky slice of shoegazing revivalism which should fit quite nicely into my top five singles of 2004 come December time. Cafiso and Tindale's voices entwine with a lazy ease that betrays their obvious familiarity with the other. It's a superb tribute to a sound that has been, sadly, retrospectively derided by many. However, the album isn't based around droning guitars and breathy vocals, which is something of a relief for those with a taste for variety who also aren't keen on seeing old Slowdive albums being pillaged for all their worth. Christmas Song saunters with a summer's grove, though lines such as 'You know I'm always watching' has a certain sinister air to upset the apple cart just a little amongst 'I love you more then a thousand Christmases'. At times, it's hard to pinpoint quite what direction Joy Zipper are coming from - 33x's slide guitar alongside Tindale's almost-talking vocals brings to mind the many fine moments that Mazzy Star provided with us, while the opening bars to Out Of The Sun bring the best moments of 60s pop into the 21st century. The epic is perhaps the six minute (brilliantly titled) In The Never Ending Search For A Suitable Enemy, possibly the point where the duo's vocals are most perfectly matched, providing the soundtrack for late Spring evenings drinking away future worries. American Whip is by no means perfect, the odd track is often screaming for an injection of life into it while the short asides peppered across the album act as more irritants then distractions, the main suspect being Drugs, whose 24 seconds only serves to show that the eponymous subject remains as dull as ever even when encapsulated in a few lines. But, but, but... minor complaints aside, while this album may well be overlooked by many, it will be cherished by those who afford it the further investigation it so clearly deserves. * About: Joy Zipper is an American indie pop duo from Long Island, New York, made up of Tabitha Tindale and Vincent Cafiso, who are also a married couple. The duo has been playing dream pop since the late 1990s. The band is named for Tindale's mother. Their songs are underpinned with darker scarred lyrics (suggested in interviews to have been inspired by the death of Cafiso's father) causing them to be famously compared to, 'a candy apple with a razor blade inside'. Musical influences of the band vary from 1960s rock outfits The Beatles, The Velvet Underground and most associated, The Beach Boys, to early 1990s noise rock pioneers My Bloody Valentine, and The Breeders. -=- SHGZ -=- -=-=-==-=-=- Shoegaze is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the late 80s. The genre is very difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and textural distortion that create a tranquil, opaque feeling. ---==--==---