FRENCH CASSETTES - Benzene - LP - Vinyl [JUN 7]

LP - Vinyl.   

The album title for French Cassettes’ new album Benzene—an abstraction of frontman Lorzeno Scott Huerta’s family nickname—was chosen on a whim. “I wish I had a better explanation,” he admits. “I guess I should have Googled it first.”

The self-deprecation is classic Benz, as is this crossing of the wires between the flippant and the deeply meaningful. It’s one reason the San Francisco band’s third album holds up so well to repeated listens. Even when influences like The Magnetic Fields and The Beach Boys peek through, Huerta’s lyrical aesthetic is his own: the San Francisco band’s new album is packed to the gills with funny, memorable one-liners that take a twist for the heartbreaking. “My mother’s mother talks in comic sans,” he sings. “I will never not love her. I wish there were more emails to read.”

Benzene, recorded with Cassettes’ cofounder Mackenzie Bunch (they started the band together in High School back in Ripon, California) and drummer Rob Mills bears evidence of a band more comfortable with both taking risks and taking it easy. “When You Know You Know” finds a soulful groove that continues into lilting quasi-Americana of “Megabus.” But the band never stands still for long: “Normal Day,” with its breakbeat-style drums and woozy Mellotron, is the band at its most carnivalesque. “White Noise” is a testament to Bunch’s knack for adventurous production, all warbling and dueling guitars and brutally oversaturated drums.

Tracklist: 

Side A
1. Fast Held Hand
2. Eyes Glazed Over
3. Medium Horny
4. Baseball Bat
5. White Noise

Side B
1. When You Know, You Know
2. Megabus
3. Normal Day
4. Finally
5. Up2You