Ducktails is the one-man psychedelic pop project of Matthew Mondanile, guitarist for North Jersey up-and-comers Real Estate and more importantly, a proud son of the mid-1980s. If you happen to have tumblesaulted into the world at about the same time, Mondanile's solo wanderings-- already corralled and categorized by some as tropical lo-fi or a part of the memory-mining hypnagogic pop shift-- should represent a deep rabbit hole. Chances are the first impressive pop sounds you (or I) heard as tots in overalls weren't really those of the Beatles being played/shoved down our throats by Mom or Dad. It was the guitar and synth fantasias that breathed life into our modest television diets: commercials, Saturday morning cartoons, NES, or PBS programming like "Reading Rainbow". In a way, those were our first music videos. Mondanile's moniker may seem like just a goof on a Disney cartoon of the same name, but it's also a commitment to conjuring images of "back then," whether you're 25 or 45. Landscapes, his latest full-length, might as well soundtrack home movies of Mondanile's youth. On VHS, of course.
That should bring you up to speed on what's happening sonically as well. Lo-fi to the core, Ducktails is a close cousin of Real Estate's sun-dappled basement pop (kind of an oxymoron), Mondanile's Deadhead guitar tones carrying over chord for chord. These, however, are largely instrumental jam sessions of a more monastic stripe. As has been the case with his vinyl and cassette-only releases over the past couple of years, Landscapes' setup is ultra-spare: synths, guitar, drum machine. The success and failure of these songs lies not in the hook department but in how well Mondanile is able to harmonize these textures and squeeze them into a pop context, how he's able to convince a listener to smack their own pleasure centers.
Opener "On the Boardwalk" is a light synth mist that's very much the tone setter for the rest of the record. With the exception of "Landrunner", a hairsprayed guitar jam far more forceful than the rest, everything floats by as if on its own weed-fueled current. That's a double-edged blade for sure, and no matter how ridiculously tuneful Mondanile's loop pedaling gets, things get sticky. While "Deck Observatory" is the kind of glass-bottomed bathtub zen its title suggests, "Welcome Home (I'm Back)" seems to have had its tempo slowed down past the point of deliriously languid and into yawn territory. But Landscapes is rarely anything but engaging. "Wishes" in particular is a slacker standout more harmonically rich, more sweetly and appropriately lonesome than anything else here. And if it weren't for the brittle, frequently jazzy guitar licks that braid together Mondanile's key solo in "Roses", you'd be listening to music more fit for a Chinese restaurant or Walgreens. Not a layer goes to waste, though. Just before launching into "Spring", a slim guitar jam that could easily have been an outtake from the Terror Twilight recording sessions, Mondanile mumbles "it sounds cool like that." Indeed. It looks cool, too.
