PARK THE VAN RECORDS
2009
Winter Of Our Discotheque
About This Album
The Winter of Our Discotheque is an album with two personalities. Its first half is a brilliant, fuzzy psychedelic rambler of pop, alt-country, and garage rock fitted to strong melodies and shuffling experimentation. Its second half sputters a bit, the experimentation and excellent tunes shelved in favor of hazy atmospherics and an overall feeling of semi-aimless demos. Despite the lackluster slow-burning second act, the strong songwriting and consistently compelling paranoid lyrics make the entire affair memorable. When Golden Boots are good, they're really good. The first five songs feel like an indie car crash where Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band meets the Beta Band, Big Star, and the chiming guitars of Vampire Weekend. If that sounds a bit off-kilter, it's part of the charm, and the group's Arizona calling card is evident throughout thanks to the production's spacious echoing textures that instantly recall the desert. The four-song arc from "Easy Lie" to "Ghosts" is particularly strong, featuring wonky guitars, raspy vocals, and fabulously incongruent patches of dub, country, and outright outsider pop. "Black and Blue" in particular feels like a long lost Neutral Milk Hotel song, with all its fuzzy tones and equally fuzzy vocals undercut by slabs of guitar sunshine.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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