As a multi-instrumentalist for the touring lineup of Tame Impala, Jay Watson has rode shotgun on Kevin Parker's accelerated ascent from acid-rock purist to synth-pop aesthete. But Watson's pursuits outside that band have veered in all sorts of directions. His other group, Pond, is the unbridled id to Tame Impala's steely superego, a band that feels no shame in giving songs titles like "Heroic Shart" or compunction in flipping between blown-out narco-rock and new wave in the space of two releases. Likewise, in just a year, Watson's solo alter ego GUM has hot-wired the grotty psych-pop of 2014's Delorean Highway into the block-party prog of sophomore effort, Glamorous Damage.
What ultimately unites Watson's constellation of bands is a desire to divorce '60s psychedelia from period details and infuse it with other temporally dislocated sounds, be it '70s art rock, '80s electro, or '90s lo-fi. Compared to Tame Impala's IMAX-scaled productions, Glamorous Damage is like the 8-bit, Nintendo videogame adaptation of a blockbuster film—an offshoot that can't possibly match the grandeur of its esteemed affiliate, but possesses a quirky charm all its own. And where Tame Impala's super-sized sound swaddles Parker's intimate lyricism, GUM's downsized dimensions can barely contain Watson's eccentric, multi-voiced personality.
Watson may double down on cheeky '80s signifiers here—arcade-game laser blasts, boombox beats, falsetto hooks, high-pitched cathode-ray frequencies—but they're the foundations that support his freakery, like the skull-piercing synth drone that overwhelms the Princely funk of "Anesthetized Lesson". Where Delorean Highway featured a wobbly but ultimately faithful cover of Genesis' 1980 pop crossover hit "Misunderstanding", Glamorous Damage deviously twists synth-pop until it turns into prog-rock: The brief opening snippet "G.U.M." introduces a budget Chemical Brothers bass groove that reappears in extended form as "R.Y.K.", where it ultimately serves as the canvas for a splatter of Kraftwerkian synths and smeared guitar solos.
Glamorous Damage succeeds so long as that impulsive energy is given enough space; when Watson stays locked in a single gear—like on the pastoral goth of "Greens and Blues", or the Ariel Pink Floyd reverie "She Never Made It to Tell" or the spoken-word title-track throwaway—the album stalls. Of course, even GUM's most fanciful gestures will feel modest next to Tame Impala's interstellar overdrive. But there's enough synthetic psychedelic splendor on Glamorous Damage to soundtrack a DIY planetarium laser show under the covers with tinted flashlights.
