Orlando siblings Andy and Edwin White have amassed an impressive catalog since emerging in 2008 under the inscrutable
Tonstartssbandht moniker. The D.I.Y. improvisational duo made their Mexican Summer debut in 2017 with Sorcerer, a dizzying three-track set that rarely flirted with actual songcraft. The sumptuous
Petunia -- their 18th effort -- opts for a sort of jammy brevity, eschewing the long-form ideations of its predecessor for something that hews dangerously close to pop. That's not to say that the
White brothers have cannonballed into the mainstream, as each of
Petunia's seven cuts contains multitudes, but they have managed to whittle their sonic explorations down to the choicest bits. Commencing with the knotty yet breezy "Pass Away," one of a handful of tracks that sound like a Krautrock
Grateful Dead having a go at Pet Sounds,
Petunia is a summery affair that plays to the pair's instrumental strengths. It's also
Tonstartssbandht's most polished offering to date and their first album to be composed and recorded in a single place and over a short time period. The swinging "Hey Bad" and the dreamy "Magic Pig" are tightly constructed and loveably ramshackle, with plenty of bluesy licks and subtle melodic detours. Elsewhere, the looping electric guitar and skittering drum work that propels the dreamlike "What Has Happened" is helped along by soaring brotherly harmonies. Far removed from the band's previous work,
Petunia feels more in line with the prog-tinged roots rock of
Steve Gunn or the bucolic folktronica of
Bibio. They're still blazingly idiosyncratic, but in taming the sprawling improvisations of the past, they've discovered their pop acumen. ~ James Christopher Monger