In the 50s and 60s music was a tangible matter. The middle of the last century left us not only the crackle of vinyl and faded Polaroid photos, but also a special aura of time – an anxious anticipation of change, wrapped in the packaging of impeccable style. Garage rock was in the gap between innocence and anxiety: too loud for the radio, too honest for the stage. Guys recorded in basements, girls sang in churches, and all this noise – raw, unpolished, accidental – turned out to be more alive than any studio gloss. Seventy years have passed, and it turns out that this sound never went anywhere. It just changed address. Seattle. Apartment shows, borrowed amplifiers, rooms that ring too long after the last chord. It is here that Chico Detour found themselves – and, judging by the new EP “Wash It Down”, released on May 29 on Den Tapes, they are not going to leave it.
photo credit Brittne Lunniss
The guys enter with the grace of burglars who know the code to the safe. Their sound is deliberately rough energy, where the room seems to tilt one degree to the left, creating slight dizziness. The history of the band formed from coincidences – and this only strengthened their attraction to each other. Sebastian Felipe brings songs as raw material, but the final form arises in the process of friction: Michelle’s voice is pulled out of the noise, like a signal that has to be caught on the edge of interference; Brennan’s bass falls exactly into the right point, not expanding but narrowing the space; Christopher holds everything in the coordinates of garage rock tuned to freak-beat and psychedelia, where repetition is not a device but a principle. Jacob fixes the rhythm, not letting it fall apart, even when the music threatens to come apart.
Now, I propose a small walk through the tracks of the new EP of this magnificent five. The first track titled “I Want It” – I would describe as a ritual to rhythm. Without coquetry and long preludes the guys offer a direct, physical collision with desire. The track is devoid of a smile, it is harsh and methodical: repetition works like a hammer, driving in one single thought – “Attention! We begin”. And the daring vocal does this confidently fixing it until the very finale. From the direct blow of the first track the record makes an unexpected turn – attention grows into interest. “Corrido Note” unfolds a completely different logic of time. Corrido is a Mexican ballad, a genre where the hero is always a little doomed, and the story is sung again and again because it has no end. Chico Detour think through the story from the inside. The loop is the essence: the melody returns, the voice pulls behind it the shadow of Chalino Sánchez – a singer whose biography was written directly into his songs – and in this repetition the performer and the story cease to be different things. The bass with surgical precision holds the low end, warm and elastic, and the drums without haste ground everything that happens – dull, confident, not letting the sound crumble and keeping it in a dense, tangible form. The middle of the EP is the place where many records begin to lose the thread. “Wash It Down” gains sharpness.
photo credit Brittne Lunniss
“Soft Eyes” drifts with an internal compass. The melodies are deliberately blurred, the finale is distorted as if the signal was caught at the border of two frequencies. A song about moving forward while losing bearings – and the music reproduces this state. The guitar pattern stays in the space between psychedelia and freak-beat, repetition ceases to be monotony and becomes hypnosis. And then – silence of words. “Crying at My Party” is instrumental and in my opinion a very successful piece. The melody speaks through the guitar – it sounds like an internal monologue – there are no words, but there is clarity. Emotion is transmitted through rhythm and intonation, everything moves with restrained urgency. The drums hold everything vertically, even when the rest stretches somewhere sideways. The focus narrows stronger on “Christo’s Ghost”. The bass lies where it was missing, creating a sphere of groove from which it is difficult to get out. A song-obsession built on devotion to rhythm. The melody passes through like an intrusive thought. The guys demonstrate confidence in limitation, it is noticeable that they trust the material and are not afraid of pauses. “Snake Pit” closes the tracklist, slightly changing the lighting. The level of adrenaline falls, movements slow down, and the track seems to freeze in its own trajectory. Harmony carefully highlights the corners, leaving everything in its places. Attentive alertness – the space around is clearly expressed. The final chorus rises up leaving a trail of understatement – the listener chooses their own ending.
The EP “Wash It Down” is clear and assertive. Even in the compact format the group manages to describe the “golden” time of the 50s and 60s. How much music do we know that describes time? Not repeating, and not even only sharing emotions, but transmitting the aura of the era… One can say with certainty about the originality of Chico Detour, the guys caught the drive and pleasure of the style, and hit the target.
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