Alex Bleeker.
Man, this guy fuckin' does it for me.
Pardon the foul language, but it's late, i'm running on fumes, fumes of fumes, and this guy is providing me with the perfect soundtrack to nostalgic mental convertible cruises through retro-grade fine-grain film stock memories of 60's suburban days that never happened. Yeah. It's like that.
I hear this guy, this Alex Bleeker character, who also supplies the increasingly hyped band Real Estate with their strums and hums, he's got it going on. His stuff with Real Estate is good, great even, with the help of Matt Mondanile (of Ducktails, Predator Vision, Dreams In Mirror Field, and probably a slew of other bands and monikers i'm not aware of), these guys encapsulate growing up in middle class suburbia. Beers in styrofoam coolers and kids in the blow-up pool. Weekend trips to the Jersey Shore and the occasional Marlboro light. Truly, good stuff.
But here, with his 'Freaks', Bleeker shines like a Jersey born Neil Young, fingers flicking through frets and riffs with perfectly relaxed precision. It slows, fades, then the blood starts flowing, something's going on, and suddenly those same riffs and frets emerge, this time backed by something teeth grittingly good. The Oh face rises.
i don't often get hooked on an album right away. Certain tracks will pull me in, and little chords and noodlings will coax me into giving song X a chance, as opposed to the regular track Y. Suddenly, X beats Y, V comes into the picture, and in a matter of weeks, i've got a new discography flowing through my i-tunes. This album, however, leaves me without a favorite track. Every time i've listened to it, it's been start to finish. Full thing through. It even made me late for a rather important meeting. Thanks Bleeker. Really. It was worth it.
See, when you get past the relaxed precision, when you overcome the calm beats and family's back porch in the summer lyrics, it's the voice that hooks you. What's behind the voice, i guess. When i hear someone sing, and their image appears in my head, that's a good sign. But when they appear, eyes clamped shut, little dribbles of sweat on the un-swabbed brow, neck curled in summoning the past in the bulged veins and pulsing temples, well, that's just something else. That's the kind of art I flock to.
Anyone can string a few catchy notes together. Rhyme some words and tap some drums, and yeah, it's music, but it's not art. It's not music. Get me? When this kind of art hits my ears, it gets in all the senses. I smell that suburban summer. i taste that cool raspberry ice-tea with the mint leaves from Nana's garden atop the ice chunks in the sweaty plastic cup. i see Alex Bleeker and The Freaks, playing, sitting, watching the sunset over the trampoline and neighbor's fence in the backyard. Little fireflies starting to appear. And you feel that temperature, that perfect cool warm that only an early summer night can give. And, well, shit man, it's fuckin good. Really fuckin' good.
... i guess Jersey ain't that bad...
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