Hey, is there a name for that approach that's sort of like minimalism but not really minimalist? Like, your conventional pop material is there, except that's all there is-- everything is stripped back to clean, functional lines, like a more elaborate version of a Mondrian painting. Is there a term for that? Because that's what Track Star do.
You might know Track Star's Wyatt Cusick from indie-pop darlings the Aislers Set, whose The Last March he played bass and sang a couple songs on. Track Star is sort of 'his' project, and they don't sound a whole lot like the Aislers: less frilly, less twee, and they don't go for the Byrdsy "San Francisco sound" the Aislers do. If they sound like anyone from the area it's Imperial Teen, who use the same trick-warm guitars, songs clicking or jangling along on just a few chords, every melody very deliberately meant as a hook, mood going from bratty to precious by turns. Imperial Teen do it more flashily and interestingly, but the odd thing about Track Star is that it's precisely their lack of being interesting that makes them charming.
I honestly mean that. Their first album was called Communication Breaks-- I've just realized that its cover really does look like "a more elaborate version of a Mondrian painting"-- and it was this great, slow sleeper: not a lot seemed to be going on in it, but it made excellent company. Bits were whispery, bits were punkily fizzy and speedy. Mostly, it had a casual quality that could break amusingly forward-- one track was just unison shouting and acoustic guitar abuse, and another got through a verse worth of pop-hit material before the guys decided to try on their metal yells. Even the lyrics had this weird charm-- deliberately conventional, bald-faced, and almost cleverly just-there. It started like this: "There are three ideas in my head/ One's to suck on fumes til I'm dead/ One's to cover the city in flames/ And one's to run to the roof/ And then shout out your name."
Whereas this album is, like, mature, which at points is a shame and at points is commendable. The same process takes place: the songs start off seeming massively boring-- like by-numbers paintings done only in primary colors-- but gradually reveal themselves to be pretty fascinating on some near-subliminal level. And the newly 'sophisticated' writing-- meaning 'still less sophisticated than most bands'-- sometimes works itself into a rigidly arranged sweetness that's reminiscent of recent Ladybug Transistor, with hooks that originally seemed a bit lame eventually seeming near-brilliantly subtle.
On the other hand, a lot of the hooks really aren't as good, even the ones borrowed from the last record. And Matthew Troy, who has a very poor voice indeed, is given a really unconscionable amount of space to inflict it upon us. Thus, a lot of the moments which make Track Star sound like more than just a side project-- "The One We Play", which fills in for prime Kleenexgirlwonder now that Graham Smith's gone dumb, or the terrific tag-team of "Goodbye to the Dream" and "Something to Do"-- get balanced to zero by plodding drags like "Amy Tell Me Why" and "Cross Country". At points, Track Star seem as likeable as Unrest. At points, they make me feel like a chump for having typed that.
Regardless, I keep throwing both this and Communication Breaks on. Casually, between things I actually want to listen to. And I keep being interested in something in there, something about an indie-pop band that doesn't seem to be trying anything at all. They might be the best sneakily boring-sounding band in the world-- and so long as I can't quite figure out whether that's a compliment or not, I'll probably keep listening.
