A couple of weeks back I received a kickass shipment of 7”s from Gold Robot and Royal Rhino Flying Records — one of which was this stellar EP put out by Virgina’s “ambient/psychedelic/folk” musician Adrian Todd Webb, whose stage name is Seamonster. Threw in as an added extra with my other orders (thanks guys!), Two Birds quickly and quietly rose to the top of my vinyl pile and has since found a near-permanent home on my turntable.
Pressed as a 33 1/3 7”, there’s no surprise that a lot of music is packed into this record, but having five tracks to listen to was even more than I was expecting. The A-side starts off with an instrumental intro track, entitled “New England” which, based on my travels to the East Coast, is an apt musical representation of the area. If you’ve heard a Seamonster track, odds are it’s been the woozy, psych-heavy “Bearsuit” which shows up as the finale as the A-side, however, my favorite of the front tracks is the more upbeat, driving “Oh Appalachia” which meshes together some electronic noise spurts with a more traditional stripped down indie-rock arrangement (simple acoustic guitar, solid drum line).
Now the two track B-side is really where the group shines. “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol”, a track most definitely influence by the book of the same name, is the most lyric heavy song on the release. With nothing more than a couple of repetitive lines softly going on the background, all attention is focused on Webb’s delicate singing of deeply thought-provoking words (e.g. “space is all one space / though all one thought”). Finished up the EP is the pleasant “Annalee” which sounds like it could be easily mislabeled as “60s folk” and placed on some dusty shelf in an Anywhere, USA record store.
You can download the entire EP for a “Name Your Price” fee from Seamonster’s bandcamp page or head over to the shop to snatch a copy of the slick all-white vinyl. To give you a taste, here’s my favorite song “Oh Appalachia” with a hyperactive Railcars remix of the track thrown in for good measure:
Seamonster // Oh Appalachia
Seamonster // Oh Appalachia (Railcars Remix)
