San Francisco's Railcars is the wonderfully untidy noise-gaze-pop project of Aria Jalali. While Jalali writes and records (and sometimes produces, when Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu isn't doing it) all of these songs, live he gets electronic help (synths and beats and noise pedals and other such loud things) from a man named Sam. Live, they even have a guy in charge of "the visuals." Trippy!
We definitely hear a lot of Spencer Krug influence (Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown dude) in Railcars. Jalali has vocal similarities to Krug, and his music sounds like a more experimental and more distorted Sunset Rubdown. Oh, and Railcars have toured with Handsome Furs. And while, yes, that's the other Wolf Parade dude, it does makes for nice two-degrees of band separation type of thing.
Anyway, Railcars' pop often sounds super muddled. It's not unpleasant, and we actually can rock out to this, but it's often hard to hear exactly all that's going on. At least we know the beats are good. But for the rest, you've got to do a little digging to get down with these guys. It's worth the effort though. Railcars have built strong foundations under all these loud layers of poppy punk muck. |
 |
