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The name screams hair metal, conjuring visions of hideously made-up, tight-trousered Sunset Strip wasters drinking away their album advances in the mid-80s. But London four-piece Trailer Trash Tracys are no such retro-coloured combo – or, rather, they don’t stir neon nightmares of Stryper and Cinderella. Instead, they summon from the shadowy past whispers of David Lynch soundtracks, 80s drum-machine percussion, Cocteau Twins-echoing ambience and winsomely bittersweet vocals somewhere between Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval and the more plaintive tones of The xx’s Romy Croft.
Vocalist Suzanna Aztoria’s sublime presence is certainly the immediate hook here, comprising the most accessible element of music that can, sometimes, be remarkably shrill of design, beats clanging with metallic resonance beneath an enveloping fug. Live with Ester a while, though, and what’s initially suffocating to the point where song structures are reduced to variations of light and shade over any discernable progression from verse to chorus begins to unravel in a quite beautiful way. The first moment of clarity comes with the single Candy Girl, on which the sound of Phil Spector-produced girl groups is overlaid atop a slow-shifting shoegaze-y rumble. It’s a brilliant, charming slice of avant-pop that, in a parallel dimension, would be a number one in a heartbeat.
Once the clouds have drifted further apart, more gems reveal themselves. There’s no way that even the most naïve of listener would bracket Trailer Trash Tracys’ output as chillwave (or whatever variant on the term you prefer), but in the production of Strangling Good Guys and You Wish You Were Red there’s that same sepia-hued haze that characterises so much of the genre’s standout artists. But if the likes of Toro Y Moi and Washed Out are meant to be heard at the beach, Ester is a collection best suited to after-hours reflection, a glass of red in hand and the TV playing only static. Los Angered is a cut from Polly Jean’s Is This Desire LP on a sugar-rush; and the spiralling melody of Dies in 55 proves truly entrancing, dancing like fairground lights against a night sky. Closer Turkish Heights is the sound of a digital bath gurgling down the plughole, fizzy beats draining away just as the colour does from Aztoria’s tremendous performance: from flushed cheeks to monochrome, a soul spent, and the credits roll. --Mike Diver
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CD Description
Inhabiting their own beautifully dark, ethereal corner of the musical universe, poised somewhere at the crossroads between the nocturnal, rolling soundscapes of Angelo Badalamenti and the sublime, naive melodies of 50s pop, Trailer Trash Tracys are a deliciously unique proposition. Recorded by the band themselves on a "solfeggio scale" – a scale to which, apparently, western guitars and pianos are not pitched to – Ester is an ambitious achievement that marries an experimental urge with a love for the standards and classics of pop eternal. The freeform intro "Rolling - Kiss The Universe" leads us into Trailer Trash Tracys' own otherworldy sonic space in which their ideas play freely. Deep and hazy sonic textures drift around singer Suzanne Aztoria's gossamer light vocals, which sound as though they were beamed from another dimension, evoking a sensual, yet unnerving tension. The album progresses to reveal ever expanding possibilities, running the gamut from the spiralling guitar shreds of "Engelhardt's Arizona" to the gloriously seductive and brooding pop of "You Wish You Were Red", out to the delicate, pinprick orchestrations of "Starlatine". The smouldering slow-burn of "Turkish Heights", meanwhile, closes the album in poignant style, romantic, dreamy and sincere, revealing a tender heart beating indelibly inside the machine. With "Ester", the inimitable world of Trailer Trash Tracys is brought to haunting, vivid life (in a visual sense as well, with Kurt Ralske responsible for the artwork) – a little off-kilter, a little askew, but nothing less than utterly beguiling and completely memorable. Treasure them now.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Some artists have a willful tendency to begin their albums with a track wholly at odds with the rest of their offerings. Sparklehorse, for example, came down with a case of the screaming emos at the start of the heart-melting Good Morning Spider, whilst JJ's Jj Nº 3 began a blissfully light-filled record with a moment of bleak darkness.
Give the opening track of Trailer Trash Tracys' debut longplayer a listen and one might expect them to be an unholy exercise in freeform psychedelic funktronica - a prospect sure to pique curiosity and turn stomachs in equal measure.
As it pans out, though, 'Ester' is actually a delightful run of mellow electronica and twanging guitar, topped off by echo-drenched laconic female vocals, a la Stereolab, Saint Etienne and the aforementioned JJ. Swoon and sway are the order of the day and they deliver in spades, the vocals luscious yet distant whilst the guitar accompaniment throbs gently along, reminiscent of Julee Cruise's 'Falling' - never more so than on stand-out track 'Candy Girl', which would not be out of place in Twin Peaks.
Whilst it gets a lot right, this is not a perfect album. The production is of the 'everything loud' school, which leaves precious little room for the tunes to breathe, whilst the songs themselves begin to sound a little samey after a while. Perhaps if they'd spread a little of the wanton creativity that is on show in the first track, the album as a whole would have benefited.
There is no doubt, though, that 'Ester' is an excellent debut which comes with a hearty recommendation to anyone with a soft spot for spaced-out indietronica. Just don't judge the album by the first track...
Give the opening track of Trailer Trash Tracys' debut longplayer a listen and one might expect them to be an unholy exercise in freeform psychedelic funktronica - a prospect sure to pique curiosity and turn stomachs in equal measure.
As it pans out, though, 'Ester' is actually a delightful run of mellow electronica and twanging guitar, topped off by echo-drenched laconic female vocals, a la Stereolab, Saint Etienne and the aforementioned JJ. Swoon and sway are the order of the day and they deliver in spades, the vocals luscious yet distant whilst the guitar accompaniment throbs gently along, reminiscent of Julee Cruise's 'Falling' - never more so than on stand-out track 'Candy Girl', which would not be out of place in Twin Peaks.
Whilst it gets a lot right, this is not a perfect album. The production is of the 'everything loud' school, which leaves precious little room for the tunes to breathe, whilst the songs themselves begin to sound a little samey after a while. Perhaps if they'd spread a little of the wanton creativity that is on show in the first track, the album as a whole would have benefited.
There is no doubt, though, that 'Ester' is an excellent debut which comes with a hearty recommendation to anyone with a soft spot for spaced-out indietronica. Just don't judge the album by the first track...
Format:Audio CD
I bought this having heard 3 pretty good tracks via the internet but unfortunately they turned out to be the best 3 tracks on the album and the rest is very average at best.
"You wish you were red" and "candy girl" have some great twin peaks inspired twangy guitar backed with some nice echoey female vocals plus "strangling good guys" has a splendid MBV riff to please your ears but that's about it, the remaining songs are just run of the mill twiddly electronica with the same spaced out vocals.
Download the best, forget the rest.
"You wish you were red" and "candy girl" have some great twin peaks inspired twangy guitar backed with some nice echoey female vocals plus "strangling good guys" has a splendid MBV riff to please your ears but that's about it, the remaining songs are just run of the mill twiddly electronica with the same spaced out vocals.
Download the best, forget the rest.
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Fears already exist for the future of Trailer Trash Tracys. Sure, their debut LP Ester houses some choice tunes, but the majority of these were written a few years ago and the more modern remainder just doesn't carry the same weight ... but away with such negativity for now.
For, offering more than a glimmer of hope, the recent and Raveonettes-reminiscent "Dies In 55" bucks this trend, running quiet riot with twinkling arpeggios, sugary retro-futurist equipment and unsubtle machine-gun rips from a prominent electronic drum. So too do the compressed beat of "Starlatine", its otherworldly percussion and dreamy speaker-to-speaker shifts that suggest tripping out on Mazzy Star records.
Unfortunately, elsewhere, despite what must be a conscious effort to diversify, certain experiments fall flat. Lacking cohesion, "Engelhardt's Arizona" is an overlong exercise in disparately skewed synth and aggressive drum chirrups that flail wildly in the mix rather than with real impact. Later, "Black Circle" suffers from the same problem while its bubbling bassline feels kind of nauseous, but not in a good way.
Another issue is that some tracks seem little more than badly recalled echoes of Ester's better material - see the beleaguered "Los Angered" for proof. And then there's the unnecessarily re-recorded version of the formerly striking "Strangling Good Guys". As a result, this slightly blunted edit has lost some of its crumpled shoegaze thrust, but luckily not so much as to render the track entirely impotent.
Happily, Ester mostly manages to bury its minuses however, as the shadow cast by its high points forgives that which is consigned to the shade. As such, and just as it has for the past couple of years, that mesmeric bassline so evocative of David Lynch's Twin Peaks hums perfectly here beneath Suzanna Aztoria's beautiful vocal in "You Wish You Were Red" - a ponderous account that is otherwise high on Cocteau Twins intangibility, retro rock `n' roll, warping pedal effects and an almost-C86 jangle.
Equally impressive, "Candy Girl" successfully blends those ever-so-sleek bass interjections with a dancing guitar riff, girl-group pop and lashings of nostalgic shoegaze noise. Aztoria too here engages energetically with the track, rushing upwards and falling back as gracefully as a bird in flight.
An album of two halves then, Ester is neither complete success nor total write-off. Benefit of the doubt prevails for now, but Trailer Trash Tracys are going to have to iron some consistency into any future material fast if they aren't soon to be consigned to landfill - and that's an effort surely worth making as when they find a winning formula they're really much better than their much-mocked band name may suggest.
Advised downloads: "You Wish You Were Red" and "Candy Girl".
For, offering more than a glimmer of hope, the recent and Raveonettes-reminiscent "Dies In 55" bucks this trend, running quiet riot with twinkling arpeggios, sugary retro-futurist equipment and unsubtle machine-gun rips from a prominent electronic drum. So too do the compressed beat of "Starlatine", its otherworldly percussion and dreamy speaker-to-speaker shifts that suggest tripping out on Mazzy Star records.
Unfortunately, elsewhere, despite what must be a conscious effort to diversify, certain experiments fall flat. Lacking cohesion, "Engelhardt's Arizona" is an overlong exercise in disparately skewed synth and aggressive drum chirrups that flail wildly in the mix rather than with real impact. Later, "Black Circle" suffers from the same problem while its bubbling bassline feels kind of nauseous, but not in a good way.
Another issue is that some tracks seem little more than badly recalled echoes of Ester's better material - see the beleaguered "Los Angered" for proof. And then there's the unnecessarily re-recorded version of the formerly striking "Strangling Good Guys". As a result, this slightly blunted edit has lost some of its crumpled shoegaze thrust, but luckily not so much as to render the track entirely impotent.
Happily, Ester mostly manages to bury its minuses however, as the shadow cast by its high points forgives that which is consigned to the shade. As such, and just as it has for the past couple of years, that mesmeric bassline so evocative of David Lynch's Twin Peaks hums perfectly here beneath Suzanna Aztoria's beautiful vocal in "You Wish You Were Red" - a ponderous account that is otherwise high on Cocteau Twins intangibility, retro rock `n' roll, warping pedal effects and an almost-C86 jangle.
Equally impressive, "Candy Girl" successfully blends those ever-so-sleek bass interjections with a dancing guitar riff, girl-group pop and lashings of nostalgic shoegaze noise. Aztoria too here engages energetically with the track, rushing upwards and falling back as gracefully as a bird in flight.
An album of two halves then, Ester is neither complete success nor total write-off. Benefit of the doubt prevails for now, but Trailer Trash Tracys are going to have to iron some consistency into any future material fast if they aren't soon to be consigned to landfill - and that's an effort surely worth making as when they find a winning formula they're really much better than their much-mocked band name may suggest.
Advised downloads: "You Wish You Were Red" and "Candy Girl".
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