Taking notes on prolificity from
Guided by Voices, stereo panning from
Hendrix, and pretty much everything else from early
Pink Floyd,
White Fence have concocted a two-volume set of psyched-out garage blasts, stuffing Family Perfume, Vols. 1-2 to the gills with tripped sounds and zoned-out melodies. Working under the moniker
White Fence,
Strange Boys member
Tim Presley has written and recorded feverishly, producing at least an album a year since 2010, and now this mammoth collection arrives, hot on the heels of a collaborative record with equally compulsive songsmith
Ty Segall earlier in 2012. The songs wander back and forth between dreamy acid folk,
Beatlesque pop/rock, and experimentally psychedelic garage rock.
Presley wears his '60s psychedelia influences proudly and sometimes a little too apparently. "I'd Sing This Song" comes close to a
Syd Barrett impression, and so much of the record is steeped deeply in the
Kevin Ayers/
Syd Barrett maniac genius sound that it gets to be a bit much at times. What keeps
Family Perfume, Vol. 2 interesting even with its dips into overly derivative songcraft is its constantly shifting production. Sounding by turns home recorded, sound collaged, and wired directly into some broken apparatus from a distant dream,
Presley's songs embrace the lo-fi territory pioneered by
Ariel Pink's shortwave disco soundtracks, applying a generous audio glaze to his updated garage psych outbursts. Even broken up into halves, Family Perfume requires getting lost in, and many listeners will simply not have the time, attention span, or inclination to commit to the journey. Luckily,
White Fence's homespun take on
the White Album is easily digestible in small doses, and always there with another song if you're still wanting more. ~ Fred Thomas