Local
Grooves
Tartufi
Westward Onward
(Thread)
If I had a car, I'd be in it right now, driving out of town with "Distractions,"
the third track on Tartufi's second release, Westward Onward,
streaming out of the windows – a reminder that not all the romantic
angst has been sucked out of the world. Hyper, anthemic, more hot than
cool, the six-song EP makes excellent driving music, but the kind that
leads to highway accidents and making out against the guard rails. Tartufi's
gone through some lineup – well, drummer – changes in the
past year, with Gavin Haag playing on the record and Brian Gorman now
officially in the band. The constants have been Simone Grudzen and Lynne
Angel, who share songwriting responsibilities and switch off lead vocals,
guitar, and bass. The new songs are a catchy collision of power pop
and punk rock, with the occasional '60s girl group hand claps thrown
in. Grudzen and Angel have fashioned a signature style out of slightly
messed-up, careening vocal counterpoints, songs taking their emotional
cues from whoever's in the lead. A sense of lost control streams through
"Los Lomos" and "The Want," conjuring angry late-night
phone calls and torn-up photographs, and a sweetly tough, plaintive
quality on "Terremoto" and "Distractions" makes
me think of all the love stories in the world that deserved better soundtracks
than they got. Tartufi perform with Chi Chi Palace and Sistaz in
the Pit Fri/4, El Rio, S.F. (415) 282-3325. (Lynn Rapoport)
For Stars
... It Falls
Apart (Future Farmer)
Since forming in the late '90s, For Stars have quietly become San Francisco's
finest purveyors of forlorn headphone-pop. "If I could, I would
free your heart of pain," guitarist Carlos Forster intimately warbled
on their 2001 masterpiece, We Are All Beautiful People (Future
Farmer). On the quintet's fourth album of melancholic, hymnlike lullabies,
however, he's making sure his own aorta is intact: "Your bullets,
baby, you're leaving all these holes in me," he sings on one of
... It Falls Apart's many meditations on the dissolution of a
relationship. "You're putting little knives in me." Gorgeous
enough to soothe even the deepest emotional wounds, the album rewards
with repeated listens. After all, few acts are as eloquently understated
and demanding of patience as For Stars: for those willing to sift through
some unnecessarily meandering moments – the overlong, Flaming Lips-ish
title track, the plodding "In the End" – there are countless
thrills to uncover. "I Should Have Told You" and "Calm
Down Baby" build into bittersweet minisymphonies, for instance,
while the transcendent "It Doesn't Really Matter" picks up
the pace and, in an atypically optimistic moment, promises that even
the worst heartaches don't last forever. (Jimmy Draper)
