For The Recently Found Innocent is the fifth album by White Fence, the stage name of Los Angeles-based psych-rocker Tim Presley. Presley is a highly prolific songwriter who compulsively writes and records skewed tunes to a four-track tape recorder in his bedroom. This budget conscious home studio setup has given his music—most of which has been released via the labels Woodsist and Castle Face—a distinctly wobbly and elastic sound. Midway through, a song might slip suddenly into an entirely different set of chord changes, as if Presley had simply stopped and pressed record again on another idea. Sometimes a track will lurch forward or backward in tempo as a result of a bump or tweak to the recorder’s pitch knob; the drums are usually little more than single-bar breaks snipped out of other rock songs and haphazardly strung together into off-kilter loops.
But by the time of 2013’s Cyclops Reap, Presley had gotten handy with that tape machine, and the strange transitions and shaky rhythm tracks started to seem like a natural and indispensable part of White Fence’s headspace. For The Recently Found Innocent, Presley’s debut for Drag City, is the first White Fence LP to be recorded outside the confines of his home—but it’s not as if he’s moved into Muscle Shoals. The recording quality a modest step up at best, with Presley swapping out four-tracks for eight and his bedroom for Ty Segall’s garage. It’s a change in pace, but not necessarily a nudge out of White Fence’s comfort zone. Segall and Presley collaborated together on 2012’s excellent split LP, Hair, and they have similar sensibilities when it comes to guitar solo, fuzz pedals, and out-there production tricks.
As a result, some of the wonky studio artifacts from Presley’s bedroom days have mostly been preserved, which is a good thing. Though Presley’s music takes melodic inspiration from ’60s psychedelic pop—both British weirdos like Syd Barrett, and West Coast folk-rockers like Buffalo Springfield—it’s rare that his songs cop their druggy feel from fuzz pedals or delays. Instead, weird tape tricks and glitches do the work by skewing the listener’s perception of time.
Presley is also a better lyricist than your average Nuggets devotée. He has a talent for making surreal psychobabble sound musical, and for implying a sense of narrative in verses that aren’t immediately understandable. But there's often a clear intent in the songs that's enhanced by the gonzo wordplay. On “Like That", Presley half-jokingly pines for lifestyle upgrades that prove to be out of reach on an underground rock salary—silver gates, disposable income, less attention from police. "Clean and sharp and always laughing/... Police see us but don't see us,” he sings. “I want to live like that.”
Last year, Castle Face released a live White Fence record that was recorded with a full backing band, a tight and energetic reading of songs from Presley’s back catalog that stretched all the way back to his self-titled debut. For the first time, you could hear White Fence outside the context of Presley’s four-track, and it sounded pretty huge; even his grimiest tracks came alive in a way that the tapes didn't always suggest. It wasn’t unreasonable to hope for something along those lines from Presley’s first non-bedroom LP, but in comparison, To The Recently Found Innocent is fairly subdued. It's a record shot through with feelings of anxiety and anger seemingly related to money, art, and other artists. Presley's finally made a step into the outside world, but it hasn't made him particularly comfortable.
