Thine Retail Simps Strike Gold, Strike Back, Strike Out LP
On this third full-length album, the RETAIL SIMPS remain an anomaly, serving up an uninhibited procession of jams that impedes succinct description. Christened with a new iteration of their ever-evolving name (which Discogs has mercifully compiled as a single artist,) this record is decidedly less traditionally cohesive than the previous two LPs with its mix of zappers, stewers, and instrumental breaks. Here you’ll find elements of old-fashioned boogie-woogie, barked poetry invoking the spirit of HOMOSTUPIDS, the herk and jerk of an off-kilter sonic threshold not unlike that of TYVEK, and other unlikely ingredients, all bookended with themeage including a rousing rendition of “Disco Duck” on the outro. But the space the SIMPS serenade is a grimy way station for rock’n’roll holdouts from decades past; a weird zone where shaggy 1960s garagers, cigarette-lipped 1970s longhairs, 1980s art school students, and guys who look like the saxophone player from the Muppets brush shoulders in passing with drinks in their hands. In this brilliant swamp of sound, they sometimes come across as the world’s most delusional party band, sometimes like a fentanyl-laced GRATEFUL DEAD, and occasionally like art-punk auteurs in the vein of LE SHOK (see: “Prismic Dangle”), always keeping you on your toes and never resting on their laurels. It’s exactly the type of curiously addictive concoction you might expect from a band that covers both UNNATURAL AXE and NEIL YOUNG.