Almost three years ago a band called Trailer Trash Tracys surfaced on a No Pain In Pop compilation. Their song "Strangling Good Guys" stood out with its satisfyingly distorted drums and haze of lusty shoegaze pop. It was a cut that sounded fresh, powerful, and ended up feeling ahead of a curve that gave us the similarly fuzzy pop of the first Best Coast, Pearl Harbor, and Smith Westerns demos.
A couple of singles and a long delay later, the band finally arrives at its debut record, Ester. While it's not a bad record, it ranks as a disappointment. The re-recorded version of "Strangling Good Guys" acts as a handy capsule to illustrate its problems: The blown-out drums of before are now neutered and low in the mix, and the toothy shattered-glass guitars are muzzled by newly flat production. It sounds like a song recorded by committee and subject to endless revisions, each new take diluting the original's potency. The delight of the demo version was that it felt like it existed on instinct and gut feeling, whereas this just sounds over-thought and dull.
There's a minute of a great song in "Dies in 55", but that also falls apart beneath cluttered, confused elements. We're treated to awkward drum rolls, non sequitur bass drops, and a bassline that might well be offbeat, though in such a rhythmless environment it's difficult to tell. There's nothing solid to glue these stuttering ideas together, and what started brightly quickly becomes a mess.
Trailer Trash Tracys sound much better when they mine simple patterns. "You Wish You Were Red" is carried by a basic beat, nonchalant guitar, and a sparse bass pattern. The economy of ideas means that each good one has space to really work. The restraint lends the song an airy glow and also allows Susanne Aztoria's honeyed vocals to come to the fore.
"Candy Girl" is another high point. The song first emerged a couple of years ago and, unlike "Strangling Good Guys", sounds as good as ever. The booming electronic drums and dirty, crackling guitar still carry a feeling of effortless cool as Aztoria's vocal swoops and dives. Her impressive knack for a tune is the band's big strength, and it's a shame that too often those melodies are squeezed or thrown off course by unnecessary parts.
"Engelhardt's Arizona" is a perfect example of this. Aztoria's yearning vocal fizzes with intrigue, sounding a bit like Nina Persson of the Cardigans, but it's almost impossible to pick out any nuance beneath a maddening guitar part that feels like the product of somebody who just learned hammer-on techniques and wanted to show them off.
That the 30-odd minutes of Ester took so long to finalize makes for a slightly baffling proposition, given that its two best moments sound so casually off-the-cuff and effortless. At this point it's hard not to feel like the Trailer Trash Tracys who sounded pretty vital in 2009 have been left behind by a whole slew of bands that followed their starting gun and reached the finishing line quicker, and better.
