Staff Reviews

The Molochs - America's Velvet Glory

Review by Grant Rindner

The Molochs’ sound isn’t groundbreaking, but they’re repurposing familiar elements to make a statement that anyone who’s ever felt like a relic of a bygone age will understand»

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The first album Forgetter Blues was released with Lucias Fitzsimons’ guitarist / organist and longtime bandmate Ryan Foster in early 2013 on his own label - named after a slightly infamous intersection in their then-home of Long Beach - and was twelve songs of anxious garagey proto-punky folky rock, Modern Lovers demos and Velvet Underground arcana as fuel and foundation both. It deserved to go farther than it did, which sadly wasn’t very far. But it sharpened Fitzsimons and his songwriting, and after three pent-up years of creativity, he was ready to burst. So he decided to record a new album in the spirit of the first, and in the spirit of everything that the Molochs made so far. The result is America’s Velvet Glory, recorded with engineer Jonny Bell at effortless (says Fitzsimons) sessions at Long Beach’s JazzCats studio. (Also incubator for Molochs’ new labelmates Wall of Death and Hanni El Khatib.) It starts with an anxious electric minor-key melody and ends on a last lonesome unresolved organ riff, and in between comes beauty, doubt, loss, hate and even a moments or two of peace. There are flashes of 60s garage rock- like the Sunset Strip ’66 stormer No More Cryin' or the Little Black Egg-style heartwarmer- slash-breaker The One I Love but like one of Foster’s and Fitzsimons’ favorites the Jacobites, the Molochs are taking the past apart, not trying to recreate it.
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