Golden Boots
The Winter of Our Discotheque
Park The Van
By Edmond Lapine
How do you spend a day off in the American Southwest? In the land of wide open and cactus-strewn spaces, where the Martian landscape can effortlessly reduce the most mentally-sound person to an agoraphobic puddle, does the imagination become more crucial? Think about it. Imagine how bored Carlos Castaneda must have been to have dreamed up the story of peyote mystic, Don Juan.
A few words about the imaginative Golden Boots before I properly dive right in, for those who might not yet be privy. Golden Boots claim Tucson, AZ as home, as you might deduce after a listen to their self-described "crumbly" alt-country, alt-indie brand of music. Swingin' acoustic and slidin' electric guitars blend together through the moisture of reverb and pin-drops of delay. This combination isn't anything new, however. But, GB have found a way to magically strum deserts into existence where psychedelic-brown jalopies venture westward into the fuzzy, orange horizon. Dimitri Manos' slinky electric guitar renders you the victim of a blurry heatwave as he sings to you about Cleopatra and Michael J. Fox. James Grip's drums are lackadaiscal; an old Ford breaking down. Nathan Sabatino's bass is the coming thunderstorm. Ryan Eggleston's sobering voice and guitar carry you home and give you water.
Metaphors aside, GB's follow up to the vinyl-only release, Ev/Coyote Deathbed Surprise/Telelog Freedom (People in a Position to Know Recordings) is a much more crystalline and possibly more accessible record. Hell, even the album title itself is more accessible. Where tapeloops and obscure samples vignette some tracks on E/CDS/TF, tracks on The Winter of Our Discotheque stand alone. The fine-grained production on Winter finds GB leaving the lo-fi mystique of their previous release somewhere in the dust. While the record itself is entirely solid, this mystique surfaces, albeit slightly, in my personal stand-out tracks. "Country Bat High II," has one of my favorite lyrics on the whole album: "they fed me lines from the yellow pages/I found God, he's listed under magicians." "Knife," whose lyrics boast about having "seen the desert come and go" may very well be an allusion to the statistic that Arizona is one of the fastest growing states in the country. Expect more suburbs in Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Tucson, while simultaneously expecting more bands with lyrics laden with desert requiems in the decade to come. Just a thought. But then again, the lyric may also be a reference to the circular rhythm of constant touring.
What else to expect? Expect to find the Boots crooning in your neighborhood. Expect to see them at SXSW this year. Also, expect a possible Wooden Wand/Golden Boots split sometime in the future. But that's neither here nor there.
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