Sold Date:
April 16, 2015
Start Date:
February 25, 2013
Final Price:
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(USD)
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Howdy and welcome to my store! On tour with OF MONTREAL!
In May 2011, Foxygen's Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade miniopus
Take the Kids Off Broadway to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East
Side club. The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift's outsiderpop
oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock n' roll
(At least a dozen records were finished before they graduated high school). Foxygen left the venue that night
unsure whether Swift would truly listen or sling the disc into a dumpster on his way out. You're reading this right
now because he did listen. In fact, Swift fucking flipped for Foxygen's bugged out, esoteric majesty and called
upon them immediately to say as much.
Eight months later, Foxygen was holed up for a week-long recording session at Swift's neo-legendary National
Freedom studio, creating what has becomeWe Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace &Magic, a precocious
and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine. The songs were
written in an inspired fury just after Take the Kids... was complete, pouring from their hands and mouths. Foxygen
believes each song was a message of peace delivered from cosmic beings who used France and Rado as their
messenger vessels. Some listeners may approximate with that old trope: "It's like listening to The Kinks on acid."
But that doesn't exactly do it. The deeper truth might be that this is what The Kinks would be like if they
themselves—the brothers Davies—dropped some blotter and struggled through a trip to lay down the follow-up
to Arthur. Bubbling beneath their supreme melodic instincts, there's a wild, nervy energy and a raw musicianship
that makes Foxygen incapable of doing anything exactly straight. And we wouldn't want it any other way. They
somehow pack a host of musical left turns, lyrical non sequiturs and decades-spanning bridges into industryprefered
3-4 minute gems that are at both reinvention and memorial. Don't call them the new young dudes on
the scene. They're only new to you. They've been at this rock god thing since junior high.
In the same year as Scott McKenzie the singer of "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" leaves
this mortal coil, Foxygen delivers unto us the dandy Glockenspiel-packing "San Francisco," which both
circumvents and dissects McKenzie's tune and its many cousins of the era. "I left my love in San Francisco/(That's
okay, I was bored anyway)/I left my love in a field/(That's okay, I was born in LA)" goes the lovely call-andresponse
chorus, slamming together the archetypal flower children of the 60s and the archetypal ADHD vapidity
of our recent generations. Another highlight, "Shuggie," manages to fit all the light bounce of the song's namesake
and the climbing choruses of ELO into it's 3 minutes while still filling the tune with imagery of "rhinocerosshaped
earrings" and haunted parlors. Every nook and cranny of the record is loaded with their unflappable,
brazen personalities. Foxygen takes "swagger," that as-of-late misused adjective, back once and for all. It's flipping
pyramids old and new upside down — from the miracle demo hand-off to their Richard Pryor-as-Jagger live
shows to their singular idiosynchratic vision of rock n' roll. Tracklisting:
In The Darkness-
No Destruction-
On Blue Mountain-
San Francisco-
Bowling Trophies-
Shuggie-
Oh Yeah-
We Are the 21st Century-
Ambassadors of Peace & Magic-
Oh No 2
Record Condition: This record is brand new and unplayed!
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