Kelley Stoltz
Now on Jack White’s label, the Bay Area psych-pop magician’s seventh album.
The continued obscurity of Kelley Stoltz is bewildering. His refraction of mindwarp pioneers (Fabs, Brian Wilson, Ray Davies) through more psychedelically inclined UK left-fielders (his third album was a song-by-song cover of Echo & The Bunnymen’s Crocodiles) unfailingly weaves groove-grit with divine melody, and Double Exposure feels like his best yet. Recorded in Stoltz’s own Electric Duck garage studio, it’s a magpie pop symphony for fuzz bass, Mellotron and backwards guitar. Hand-jiving opener Storms references songs from Stoltz’s past, the title track drives hard on spectral Roky Erickson riffola, before nine-minute keystone Inside My Head makes merry with motorik. Meanwhile, Down By The Sea brilliantly details a typical soft rock aficionado’s love calamity: “She was the girl of a young man’s dream / A little bit Stevie, little bit Christine / Aw, she never cared about Peter Green…” You’ve got to get him into your life. Here he is celebrating the cult of the Kim Chee Taco Man: