No stranger to shape-shifting, San Francisco’ Sean Rawls previously followed up his role in the long-running indie pop band Masters of the Hemisphere with the dub/reggae party monster Still Flyin’. After two lazily sprawling EPs and a more focused debut album, Rawls has remade the revolving-lineup ensemble on this latest EP. The sound is now detached, minimal pop that uproots the band’ touchstone influences from Caribbean beaches and plunks them down in urban, wintry Germany.
That’s right: Krautrock is the flavour of the month on A Party In Motion, but it’s not jarring in the least. There are still crowded vocal harmonies and a rubbery rhythm section, and Rawls’ knack for dreaming up slacker mantras hasn’ let him down yet. This vinyl EP – which includes a digital download – kicks off with “Bull Riff’, a six-minute introduction full of breathy vocals, sublime repetition, and a vaguely cosmic sheen. “Strength’ is more like gauzy pop, while the flipside’ brief “Neu Idea’ is more about crystalline guitar and muffled electronic beats than paying proper homage to Neu!.
The culmination of this leftfield experiment is “Higher Than Five’, eight minutes of submerged, slow-mo disco. It keeps the central groove of past Still Flyin’ records, but protracts, mellows, and strips it nearly bare. Even the horns sound on the verge of nodding off to sleep. The song feels endless in all the right ways, which is to say we’re in no rush for it to finish. When Rawls sings the refrain “No idea where we are goin’†earlier on the EP, it works as both an admission and a manifesto: he’ as uncertain of the band’ next direction as we are, and not too fussed about it either.
Doug Wallen
