Album Review – At Home With… By Proud Parents (2021) (self released)
Madison Wisconsin threesome, Proud Parents, refer to their sound as ‘janglechunk’. Considering I have made up a thousand such jangle inferenced genres to a) try and justify the inclusion of band/album in these pages and b) try and engender just a bit of originality into my desperate, very amateur, music journo skills, I am quite surprised that this one never occured to me.
Whilst jealous at their innovation, if ever a band deserved to stand alone as the sole purveyors of the worlds most exclusive jangly genre, then it is certainly this one. For theirs is a sound that is essentially one revolving around a sense of slightly manic dynamism, that is expressed in two jangled nuances.
Initially, Baby Boy, Don’t Stay and Falls Apart is all manner of the best that jangly garage rock is ever likely to provide. Swearin / The Courtneys style crunchy guitars, incessant tempos provided by layers of guitars that simply tumble over each other and the slightest whiffs of jangled me sense of modernity.
However, the most superlative parts of the album revolve around tracks where the tempo is reduced and square left field pegs are forced into round musical holes. Here tracks such as Cellophane, Livin’ In A Dream, At Home and Nirvana Tattoo, thrive upon a skew, slightly manic, Violent Femmes vocal delivery, which is prevented from falling into the abyss of the totally deranged, courtesy of a dulcet Pavement sound that is juxtaposed with the best of Woolen Men style ramshackle jangle.
Those that never want their jangle to veer more than three feet away from The Byrds rickenbackers, should turn their headphones off now, as these Proud Parents seem determined to continue taking the jangle-pop genre downthe roads less travelled.
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