“This isn't me,” sings Michael Olivares. “This is happening to someone else.” That line comes in the middle of the Mantles’ second full-length album, Long Enough to Leave, but the sense of detachment resonates throughout the record. It’s right there in the title, taken from another lyric: “You’re home/ Long enough to leave/ Always coming back to see / How far off you’ve gone.” The feeling of absence is constant-- everyone in these songs seems to disappear.
That effect gives Long Enough to Leave an intriguing tension, because musically it’s nowhere near distant or detached. It’s an open, outward-looking set of tunes, especially compared to the Mantles’ previous full-length, their 2009 self-titled debut. That record had a hermetic feel that was a big part of its charm. The blurry chords and closeted sound-- a kind of rawer, denser take on the Byrds and their Paisley Underground descendents the Dream Syndicate and the Rain Parade-- were a lot of fun to get lost in.
Here, by contrast, we get a wider variety of melodies, an airier sonic space, and a broader array of reference points. The familiar ones persist: opener “Marbled Birds” starts with a wiry hook that sounds exactly like marbled Byrds. But the acoustic-heavy title track evokes the melancholy pop of the Clean’s David Kilgour; the jangly “Don’t Cross Town” and winding “More That I Pay” approximate lo-fi R.E.M.; and the wistful chords of “Raspberry Thighs” conjure Real Estate’s sun-baked lilt. None of these tunes are clones; all are distinguished by Olivares’ deceptively-rough singing and the interplay of swirling guitars. But together all the echoes-- I’m also hearing the Kinks, Television, and the Feelies-- show the Mantles have expanded their palette.
The result is catchy, consistent material that’s welcoming sonically but mysterious thematically. Take “Hello”, a bouncy jam which is ostensibly pretty communicative; it’s about making a phone call, after all. But eventually you realize the caller-- who wants someone to “help me get out of here... help me disappear”-- never quite gets through. Even better is the enthralling “Reason’s Run”, whose coiled hooks become barbed wire when paired with distancing admonishments like, “When you saw me ahead, you should’ve crossed the street… you must be more careful about who you meet."
All this poetic exploration of distance and disconnect can also just be seen as cake-icing. The Mantles could mumble through these tunes and the infectious force of their woven melodies would remain intact. But the extra thematic layer gives the music a depth that bodes well for this band’s future (and justifies their rate of output, which is glacial compared to their super-prolific garage peers in San Francisco). Because they take their time, what exactly that future holds is, like the best parts of Long Enough to Leave, compellingly elusive.
