Gabriel Fulvimar lives in Burger Records. If you’re familiar with the Fullerton, Calif., garage-rock stronghold, pretend you aren’t and put yourself in the position of a person who only knows that the Gap Dream frontman is living inside of a record store that also happens to be his label's office. And not even one of those 90s mega-chains like Tower or Sam Goody that could pass for a luxury apartment. It’s not even Amoeba. It’s the kind of place that tends to thrive in the current economy, a nationally recognized local joint that caters to a faithful and specific demographic. But consider the logistics: does a Burger Records patron that’s just looking for an Unkle Funkle cassette run the risk of bumping into a shirtless, hungover Fulvimar if he happened to have a long night? Does he have a security deposit? Are you liable to find an opened box of Cookie Crisp in the vinyl section?
Jokes aside, Fulvimar’s current home address is the first step in establishing a narrative that steers you towards an optimal conclusion: the guy literally lives inside of a record collection! And it’s true, his new LP Shine Your Light does span the gamut of styles you’d expect from a “record store guy”, i.e., Beach Boys, Eno, Can, Velvet Underground, and tons of forgotten bands that were influenced by them. More importantly, you get the sense of what kind of guy would actually go through the hassle of living in such a place, as Shine Your Light aligns Fulvimar’s musical ambitions with a total lack of personal ambitions, doling out endearing songs about arrested development and short-term solutions that end up causing more problems in the long run.
As with Burger alums King Tuff and Ty Segall, you can apply the general tag of “loner power-pop” to Gap Dream, though unlike the aforementioned, it’s Fulvimar’s main thing rather than an aspect of his overall M.O. You can sense his ear for the canon: the unwholesome “Love Is Not Allowed” perverts the preciousness of round-like harmonizing in the style of Here Come the Warm Jets, the more rhythm-focused tracks make lo-fi approximations of T. Rex’s pretty vacancy, and you can hear a fake-it-til-you-make-it Kinks homage on “Shine Your Love”, where a regal horn chart is hilariously impersonated by MS-DOS synths more suited for King’s Quest. But for the most part, he’s more of a melody-first guy who demonstrates ingenuity over innovation and you never lose sight of how low the stakes are. The tools are crude and minimal—vintage drum machines, even more vintage keyboards, and underlying fuzz-rock guitars that put him well within Burger’s wheelhouse (or, garage).
Meanwhile, though Shine Your Light was inspired by Fulvimar leaving a go-nowhere life in Ohio after receiving an invitation to hole up in Fullerton, well...he’s arrived and “go-nowhere” means something a bit different. Judging from the majority of the lyrics, it appears that just about any personal intrusion or interaction with the outside world is too much for him to handle and he’d rather kick it alone. A new pair of boots gets Fulvimar in the mood to strut a little on “Fantastic Sam”, which is still presumably named after the sub-Supercuts hair salon chain. One song later, he admits on “Immediate Life Sentence” to getting out of the house for no other reason than to move his feet. He spends the rest of it haranguing a woman who tries to socialize him, snarling “you’re the kind of girl that wants to kill all my time,” even if the petulant tone makes him sounds like a guy who’s an expert time assassin. Note how the cruelest indignity is paying $7 for a beer, at which point Fulvimar vows “I don’t need to get laid that bad/ I’ll just stay home and get high.” Two songs later on “Shine Your Love”, that misanthropy has metastasized into full-blown nihilism—his voice curdles into a bratty snarl of “there is no past and there is no future,” and he proceeds to get blotto on a bottle of gin that itself probably cost $7.
More life-reflecting than life-altering stuff for sure, but the approachability (if not admirability) of Fulvimar’s P.O.V. establishes a personality that serves as a hook when the songs themselves don’t do much to distinguish themselves. Shine Your Light never gets oppressive, though during its final third, it does suggest what living in a record store might be like after the novelty wears out—kinda lonely, a little bit stuffy, and leaving you subject to others trying to tiptoe around, “you’re gonna move out eventually...right?” That remains to be seen, but for the time being, Gap Dream is Fulvimar’s means of “trying to find a chill spot just to organize my mind.” The song from whence it came is, naturally enough, “Chill Spot”. Consider it his way of saying “mi casa es su casa.”
