There isn't much logic behind Quasi, the Portland-based band that Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have occasionally returned to over the past 20 years. For instance: They produced a video for the song "See You on Mars" to herald the release of this record, a clip which consists of a blizzard of vintage clips all stuck together with scant regard for coherence. Coomes and Weiss don't deal in reason, at least not in this guise. Weiss' work with Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag, and Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, plus their joint tenure as back-up band to Elliott Smith, provided a fairly comprehensible path to follow. Quasi are more turbulent in spirit, especially here on Mole City, a wayward, asymmetrical double album that sees them returning to the two-piece format after a period with Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme.
Something that remains from prior Quasi records is Coomes and Weiss' love of producing short, sweet pop songs smeared in lashings of distortion. Coomes sounds like he was born with a fuzz pedal permanently attached to his foot, ready to whitewash the world with it. That mode of operation is the core Quasi sound, the safe haven they build for themselves around all the idiosyncratic turns they take elsewhere. Coomes' familiar organ sound is often to the fore, sometimes leading him into barroom and honky-tonk directions. But they can just as easily dip into droney synth work ("Chrome Duck", "Loopy"), twee 90s indie on Weiss' vocal turn ("R.I.P."), or, on one of the most affecting songs here, skirt around the kind of twilight blues found on Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos ("Chumps of Chance").
Quasi reek of the 70s, primarily through a love of power pop, Big Star, Todd Rundgren, and occasional moments of rock pomposity. The baroque beginnings of "Headshrinker" devolve into a burst of soloing of which Queen's Brian May would be proud. There's never an overall sense of direction, or a feel Coomes and Weiss are looking to stretch across this record as its primary arc. Instead, Mole City resembles a jumble of all the thoughts and inclinations they've had since their last album, 2010's American Gong. It's a mess, but Quasi find virtue in clutter, turning it into their primary motive for existence as a band. Still, it's hard to digest over the course of 24 tracks, including a limp "Tomorrow Never Knows" pastiche ("Gnot"), a moment where Coomes seems to be channeling his inner Wayne Coyne ("Geraldine"), and even a half-hearted found-sound collage on the title track.
The best song here is buried toward the end, at a point where the less patient listener may have given up altogether. "An Ice Cube in the Sun" radiates warmth and anger, with Coomes addressing "the misfits of the world," Weiss pounding away at her kit, and a point where the whole song arches into a delirious stretch of low-key pop. It's followed by a one-minute ramble into country titled "One & Done"—easily one of the most throwaway moments here—which serves to highlight just how frustrating Quasi can be at times. But it's hard to fault them when that's the whole point, when making music becomes akin to opening up a drawer full of old clothes and trying them on just because you can. The fact that there's a track here titled "Clap Trap" is both indicative of their humor and uncomfortably close to being a useful descriptor for their work.
