Trailer Trash Tracys are a London-based duo who in name and in conversation almost beg you to judge a book by its cover. Of course, there’s their choice of name, which musicians Susanne Aztoria and Jimmy Lee have tried to spin silly, fantastical lies about the origin of, crediting everything from a troupe of Russian ballerinas to a caravan of wandering aborigines. Their first album, Ester, was inspired by Sufi poetry and they played their instruments in an obscure and mystical tuning scale called the Solfeggio. Of course, they were trolling.
The frontwoman of the band, Susanne Aztoria admits some of these stories were propagated by gullible journalists. And when you start listening to their songs, especially the ones that got them notoriety—a handful of fuzzy, fizzy dream pop demos from 2009—you’d realize they were about as complicated as a fistful of pop rocks downed with a swig of cola. Static and heavy guitars, blow- out drums, droll vocals, and a general too-cool attitude made them what could be the British answer to Smith Westerns.
Six years since their debut, Aztoria and Lee continue to bill their band as a rather esoteric pop project. Althaea, their second record, is supposed to pull from “Filipino carnival music,” “Latin rhythms,” and “Japanese tropical music.” On paper, that can be difficult to parse, and it's even harder to Google, but simply put, in all the time they’ve been researching how they’d like to reinvent their sound, Aztoria and Lee discovered polyrhythms and bright synthesizers.
If you ignore all of the things they have to say their music, what you get with Althaea is an album of fun but flawed 1980s-inspired sophisti-pop. It’s tightly produced and clean sounding but almost generic in its hipness, like the droves of artisanal Tiki bars that have opened up in your neighborhood. A gloss of tropical melody haunts every moment of this album in the form of acoustic percussion and bubbly synth rhythms. It renders almost everything Aztoria and Lee in a kitschy light.
When the music works—like the neo-new wave of “Eden Machine” or the lounge pop of “Money for Moondogs”—the players are gaudy but restrained. These songs allow Azoturia, the strongest member of the group, to use her chameleonic voice, the band’s greatest asset. She can as easily channel the hypnotic effect of Elizabeth Fraser as she can the dreamy trills of Lætitia Sadier. On “Eden Machine” specifically, with its shimmying bassline and Copacabana drums, the vibe is pleasing but not overwrought.
But, for the most part, Althaea, is filled with songs that are busy and overly thought. “Gong Gardens,” which, like its title suggests, is a gong-filled affair that’s heavy on the echo and far too silly too boot. In other places like “Betty’s Cavatina” or “Singdrome” they take their supposed Asian music inspirations a little too far, with stock sound effects and rhythms that sound pulled from an overdubbed martial arts film.
What is always going to be nagging about Trailer Trash Tracys (aside from their name) is how far they will go to willfully obscure the good time they’re trying to have. Baked into their music is also the weird rhetoric of being a band that would like be seen as difficult, or at the very least, super knowledgeable. Althaea tries to flex their bona fides or worldliness hard, but it feels flat in the end. And that’s because past all the talk, Trailer Trash Tracys are very component pop band, capable of writing a sugary hook and stringing together a sticky melody. Perhaps they’re too-smart-for-their own good, but in the moments they can get over themselves, Althaea, at least for a flash, can offer more than just a thrill.
