Saturday Looks Good to Me is the name composer/guitarist Fred Thomas’ pop fantasies take when played out in a fully-orchestrated setting. While Thomas’ music is often described as experimental indie pop, I think that genre-coiners would be better served if they substituted out the term “experimental” for something more along the lines of “time-traveling.” Calling Thomas’ music experimental confuses his time-splicing with the unfamiliar territory and unconscious sonic alchemy of experimentation proper.
Thomas’ favorite destination is some kind of alternate Beach Boys era, pared down and more driving than the original. Maintaining the skipping, tambourine-smacking feel of an innocent day spent along the coast, Thomas’ lo-fi arsenal of guitars, glockenspiels and tape loops creates something that, while clearly acknowledging the original, updates the obsolete parts and drops the dated flourishes.
That aesthetic is the core of Thomas’ material, but it by no means is the most interesting part. When something fails to go according to plan ““ like when his time machine gets stuck somewhere in the ’80s, or when the thing explodes and we get some real experimentation ““ Thomas presents us with some of his more interesting results.
Take “Money in the Afterlife,” for example. While a trebly bass cycles endlessly forward, the guitar overlays a jagged, disco-ball reflecting line imbued with the confusion of youth. ’80s or not, the innocence remains, allowing for some straightforward, musing questions that would sound out of place anywhere else. Throughout the song, Thomas murmurs postcoital nonsense about being in a place that even words can’t find: “What will we do with all these words when we die? / Will they spend like currency in the afterlife?”
Then there are the moments where Thomas hits his usual era, but the location shifts. “Apple,” the album’s opener, finds the songwriter back in the ’50s but partnered with a Motown progression rather than the usual surf rock. The result is a two-minute anthem, the sort of song in which all sins are forgiven and a world of people, swaying slowly from one side to the other, spill their foamy beer in unison.
“Whitey Hands” is what happens when the time machine fails and we wind up in beautiful nowhere. An asymmetric experiment that begins with an up-tempo and hypnotic rhythm plucked out of some ambiguous string instrument, the track is later mediated by a floating guitar line and a beguilingly haunting melody. “Come with your Arms” likewise finds profundity in an unlikely place, beginning as above-average campfire fare and morphing, as voices and cellos are added, into a song of solace, peace and not believing in the superficial.
““ Alex LaRue
E-mail LaRue at alarue@media.ucla.edu/