Video: Wild Honey - "Untitled Film Still 96"

Wild Honey’s latest work, “Dear Cindy”, was released last December by Jabalina Música as part of its Dedicatessen series, a collection of EPs from spanish pop bands dedicating their songs to something or someone. Guillermo Farré (a.k.a. Wild Honey) was inspired by Cindy Sherman’s images featured in her “Untitled Film Stills” series and thus dedicates these songs to three of these photographs, auto-protraits for which he imagines a story, a possible setting and a suitable identity. With his characteristic singing and multiple arrangements such as wind instruments and choruses accompanying the poppy instrumental basis, Wild Honey delivers three tracks that have the sound of a very sweet music box. “Untitled Film Still 96” makes the side A of this EP and this is also the photograph that gave name to Cindy Sherman’s most well-known series. The video, however, does not relate directly to the image titling the song and so helps it stand on its own and not only as part of a dedication series. Directed by Pablo Serret de Ena, the clip shows a group of people engaged in different activities or simply standing, the image cut repeating the rhythmic pattern of the song, as if each person was an element of the music. “Dear Cindy” includes also “The Echo” and “I Made This Tape For You,” two additional pop delights that make this yellow 7” quite a collector piece.

Wild Honey - Big Flash

Big Flash, Wild Honey
Lazy Recordings/Lovemonk, Spain
Rating: 79
by Souad Martin-Saoudi 

The insatiable Guillermo Farre continues to move forward in the glittering territory he began to explore with Epic Handshakes and a Bear Hug (2009). Riding along the avenues, alleyways, and discreet tree-lined passages of his creation, he has reached the whimsical lands of Wild Honey. The aerial textures of the guitars and keyboards, the vocal harmonies and the reverb arrangements that were hallmarks of past Wild Honey works now act as signals of Farre’s thorough understanding of sound aesthetics to shine brighter. Farre abandoned home production and enlisted one of his musical heroes, Tim Gane from Stereolab, to help with production. The creative union appears to be fruitful in all respects as gentle warmth nestled in serenity emanates from this sunny album recorded at soundmagic studios in Berlin. Wild Honey attains a much clearer sound that best serves those sometimes-wistful, sometimes-lighthearted '60s-influenced melodies and harmonies. 

The Madrileño maintains his anecdotal and sensitive way of writing, yet deploys it on more intricate and elaborately decorated soundscapes. All tracks are multi-layered, even kaleidoscopic, echoing the collage on the cover. The sweet and bouncy album’s opener “An Army Of Fat Synths” rather perfectly blends the naivety in Farre’s voice with forceful percussion and retro-futuristic accents (brainchild of both Gane's and Farre’s sonic explorations and recollections). On “The Kite And Captain John” it seems like softness and finesse met denial and melancholy. Farre intones, “Let’s pretend that nothing changes but the weather,” with an awareness that inevitably results in a twinge of sorrow and a small knot in the throat of the listener. The mood is instantly brightened by the tambourine-inflected “It's All In The Film.” He is strangely reassuring in his tone while the surf-rock guitar just sways. The aerial synths and soft back vocals of “My Memory May Also Be A Wish” give a gliding sensation to this tale on selective memory. “Gothic Fiction” seems like a jolly number with added sunny groove and country flavor, yet emotion shows through when he sings about not being there for a friend in need. The sound of breaking waves that opens “See How Hard My Heart Is Beating” provides depth in a moment, using the depth of a moment. The tides and Farre’s inflections set the senses, drive out any agitation, and plunge into reveries.

Big Flash follows into a tribute to one of the initiators of avant-garde music in Brazil. “Rogério Duprat Looks Out The Window” alludes to the composer’s involvement with computer music while being backed by string arrangement. The energetic “The Newlyweds” contains a good dose of reverb with a bit of a psychedelia element. “Tooth Tree," as the title suggests, is a sentimental and idealistic number that somewhat recalls the work of Elliot Smith, though the blissful backing vocals bring us closer to twee territory. “Keyboards Under A Microscope” is a bossa nova-tinged tune on mysteries of the unknown.  On “Scissors In Hand” Farre whispers, “Greg Shaw, scissors in hand was here before,” referring to the fanzine publishing era of the Los Angeles-based label owner and rock and roll authority.  The album ends with the ethereal “Cleopatra," the shortest track of the pack. Punctuated by tambourine and what could be cat vocals or string chords, the banjo tune creates a sense of peacefulness.

The multi-instrumentalist presents a short and crazed collection of charmingly dysfunctional situations and backdrops derived from tones that actually never appear redundant. As with his last effort, the deliciously retro and saccharine 32-minute-long Big Flash calls for repeated listens to justly reveal all of its facets and brilliance. It’s with time that the 12 catchy anthemic songs burst—just like the album art, halfway between a chromatic circle and a paper made fire works—into mini incandescent explosions of joy.

MP3: Teacher Teacher - "Campamento de Verano"

September is already upon us and we can see the heat of summer vanishing. But, before we start knitting scarves in anticipation of the great cold, let us be nostalgic and longing to relive summer adventures. “Campamento de Verano,” first single from the newly established Teacher Teacher, draws directly from this youthful vigor and with humor recalls those horseback rides, canoe trips, campfire sing-alongs, and friendship bracelet-making. Teacher Teacher (probably named after’s Rockpile 1980s hit) is composed of three Madrid household names: Guillermo Farré (Wild Honey, The Mittens), María Hernández (Mittens, Charades and Las Señoras) and Cristina Gómez (Las Señoras). Embracing all at once lo-fi, fast pace, and distortion to create a juvenile pop punk, this new musical offspring is truly his parents’ child. Download "Campamento de Verano" + B-track" via Bandcamp.

Video: Wild Honey - "1918-1920"

Remember that stunningly beautiful album cover of Wild Honey’s Epic Handshakes and a Bear Hug? (Lazy Recordings, 2009). Well, Guillermo Farré and Co. have accomplished somewhat of a rendition to that image in the band’s very first music video “1918-1920," one of the album’s most memorable pieces. This time the frame isn’t as savage as that of a tiger devouring your head or a monkey jumping on your back. Instead, we’re presented with a wonderfully witty adventure featuring an aged couple and their also elderly dog. The clip’s opening image shows two birds dancing in the sky, a contradicting metaphor of what we actually get to see in the video. The time gap between 1918 and 1920 refers to a thousand days in which the couple slept side by side. Under a well-groomed supervision of director Christian Lopez, “1918-1920” plays like a wonderful short story of courage and anti-temporal love. In my original review of the album I suggested the song had a “newlywed intimacy” feeling, this clip supports that idea greatly. As our three characters walk away into the sun, the frame now captures three birds in plain flight. Romantic.

Epic Handshakes and a Bear Hug, Wild Honey

EPIC HANDSHAKES AND A BEAR HUG, WILD HONEY
Lazy Recordings, Spain
Rating: 83
By Carlos Reyes

If you’re able to look away from such a beautiful artwork, let point out that this album has been standing around me for a while. The psychology behind it makes this album hard to analyze and harder to give a rating. After numerous spins and many days of going in and out of it, most of my concerns with the album have evolved into virtues. Like Bigott or Antoine Reverb, Wild Honey’s decision to sing only in English doesn’t translate as a problem at the time of retrieving emotion or making their themes come across fluently. Epic Handshakes and a Bear Hug is the debut and proclamation of Wild Honey, a great new act charged with good-to-great songs and boosted by its wall-of-sound timbered spirit.

It’s important to emphasize the need for repeating spins if possible on a prolonged time; it’s really the only way to fully appreciate the album’s simplicity and how at the end everything sums up to “a big parade.” This is the overall endearing project of Guillermo Farre and his friends, based on Madrid and bringing hooky melodies for hooky hearts. They got the potential to internationalize following the Pitchforkian trends and the fair offering of European acts that are able to prosper with such audience. Wild Honey sounds a bit like Real Estate, The Mountain Goats, Woods, perhaps even Camera Obscura. One would expect such an album to drown in its influences, but they pull it out adding their own spice: a calculated dose of twee pop.

The album opens with the whimsical “Whistling Rivalry”, a nice ukulele based track with handclaps and whistles about aging, “Were we ever that young?” It follows with the moistly and beautiful “1918-1920”, which serves as the sonic landscape of the entire album. Some songs reach such a level of intimacy that one would swear a couple of newlyweds are singing them. At the other end, it’s able to be politically conscious in “Kings of Tomorrow” by trusting their piece of music rather than making some kind of boring political statement. In a way, they serve upon folk to spread the message. “One Word Prayer” struggles to structure its lyrics, so the vocals are changed into a state of uncommon accelerations that although rushed, work great in a song about mourning.

In “Gold Leaf” they manage to relocate their folksy sound to make a bossa-nova chant bright and simple. Most of the album carried by Guillermo’s vocals (he sounds a bit like Jorge Drexler) but occasionally a girl or two show up to steal the attention, in this song they sound as beautiful as Natalia Lafourcade. They even manage to make a rolling road-travel song out of the self resolved “Brand New Hairdo”, “I’ve got a brand new hairdo just to persuade myself that life has order and direction, and that there’s a place where I’d like to be.” Wild Honey holds a monumental-like disposition that carries its power of simplicity quite well, while managing to sound big and tall in its dynamics.

♫♫♫ "Gold Leaf"
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