THE MEETING PLACES' press release refers to "dream pop", something which instantly escorted your reviewer back to the short-lived scene involving the wondrous likes of AR KANE, early Ride and the Boo Radleys before the dreaded term "shoegazing" took hold and seemingly banished "dream pop" for good.
This LA-based quartet, though, have rediscovered the dream pop source with "Find Yourself Along The Way": their excellent, elegant, brittle but tough debut, recorded by kindred spirit and W&H favourite Aaron Espinoza of Earlimart fame.
Yet "Find Yourself Along The Way" is a far more considered, consistent affair than the stoned eclecticism of Earlimart's recent "Everyone Down Here" album. Beautifully recorded and realised, it showcases a band who excel with textures, mystery and crescendo, but don't sacrifice songs and structure in the process.
"Find Yourself Along The Way" opens with arguably your reviewer's favourite track "Freeze Our Stares". All the band's essential ingredients are there: Arthur Chan's slow-fever basslines; Dean Yoshihara's patient, lonely drumming; Chase Harris's forlornly attractive voice drifting in someplace between Mark Gardener and Mark Kozelek, and of course secret weapon Scott McDonald's huge sheets of melody and E-bow dissonance. It's fabulously enigmatic, evocative stuff, dreamy and intoxicating in the extreme.
On other occasions, The Meeting Places take their spacy, glacial sound on romantic, pop-addled vacations. For concrete proof, check both the gorgeous lilt of "On Your Own" (ooh! that killer middle eight strumming!) and the gentler, Galaxie 500 -style "See Through You". Or perhaps go one better again with the huge, Doves-meet-Provan "Wide Awake", which is real Nectar of the Gods gear.
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But it's on tracks like "Same Lies As Yesterday" and the epic "Take To The Sun" that they truly reel your soul in. The former initially saunters along in a stately enough fashion before some lovely harmonies kick in and McDonald lets go of a torrent of molten melody/ feedback counterpoint worhy of Sonic Youth or vintage Mary Chain as the song heads for the fade. "Take To The Sun" also stuns; developing from its' numbed-out druggy starting point to something with the full-on psychedelic intent of Thin White Rope's lost classic "It's OK." Mind-meldingly good.
Tightly-reined and teetering far out there in roughly equal measures, "Find Yourself Along The Way" hoofs up some delicately mighty psych-pop thunder. Whatever you do, don't run for cover when the storm breaks.
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