Mad hype on this one; the second solo LP by Princ€ss member + Maria Somerville collaborator Finn Carraher McDonald aka Nashpaints , soon to be a collectors thing, big one if you’re into Escho, Cindy Lee, MBV, Jessica Pratt, 4AD, Panda Bear.
There's nostalgia and there's Nostalgia, right? If you survey the output of labels like Escho and 15 love, home to ML Buch, Fine and Snuggle, you'll know that although they play fast and loose with their influences (from Fleetwood Mac to The Sundays to the Happy Mondays), they also augment their sound with so many creative elements that it's like a gust of fresh air across a weathered Northern European plain. Nashpaints has already been spotted wandering the fringes with "avant-pop supergroup" Princ€ss and is a long-time collaborator of Somerville; so it's easy to see why there's no shortage of interest surrounding 'Everyone Good Is Called Molly’. Thankfully, it delivers.
It's one of those records that settles in a historical/cultural no-place, drawing from '50s girl group pop, classic shoegaze, 20th century minimalism, outsider rawk and Phil Spector- not so much a fusion of unrelated ingredients; more the work of a keen listener. McDonald charts a tumultuous relationship between noise and harmony, drawing through lines that pass from The Kinks and the Ronettes to Kevin Shields, Panda Bear and Deerhunter. His second album is pop music, of a sort, and it might also be as tapped into the ha*ntl*gical main vein as Burial's 'Untrue', but it's also endlessly creative, breaking down its influences and rebuilding them as it goes.
