Lotus Plaza

Lotus Plaza

Spooky Action at a Distance

Kranky

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received an 8.4 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork. This is the second album from LOTUS PLAZA, the solo nom de plume of LOCKETT PUNDT, better known as the guitarist in DEERHUNTER. Pundt has penned a number of the best songs on the last two Deerhunter albums, and his first album, The Floodlight Collective was a tour de force of guitar pop smarts. He has the uncanny ability to build soaring, melodic gems from simple musical phrases; a möbius strip of a guitar line and repeating clipped drum roll in “Strangers;” a tribal drum beat holding down the foundation on “Out of Touch;” two acoustic guitar chords and a slight bit of snare as the basis for “Dusty Rhodes;” a series of slowly descending piano chord scales on “Jet Out of the Tundra.” There is a wide variety of songs and moods here, from unabashed rockers such as “White Galactic One” and “Monoliths,” acoustic laced introspection on “Dusty Rhodes” and “Black Buzz,” to the lysergic electronics of “Remember Our Days.” Spooky Action at a Distance is a wide angle view of what should be the zeitgeist of contemporary guitar pop.

Lotus Plaza

Floodlight Collective

Kranky

***LOCKETT PUNDT’s (DEERHUNTER) first full-length is an expansive meditation on the modern history of the pop song with an obvious appreciation for the atmospheric vocal harmonies of the ‘50s, the Brill Building writers of the ‘60s, and the sounds of the early ‘80s postpunk UK scene. The production is multi-multi-layered with a seemingly endless amount of subtle detail in each track, while the vocals are generally low in the mix and add yet another layer to the sound. There are certainly references to Lockett's day job here, and it can be no other way as he is an integral part of that "other" group. But he clearly stakes a claim to his own sound here.Red Oak Way starts the album off with a drumbeat and a ringing guitar hook and we are off and away on a space age pop trip. Quicksand hits next with some bouncing big beats that would not sound out of place on a classic Shangri-Las' song, and spiced with a dash of west coast surf city. These Years is the most understated track on the album, a slow haze of introspective rumination. Different Mirrors tips the hat to Martin Hannett with the opening dry reverbed thwack of a one-two beat before soaring into the stratosphere, while Whiteout is an ethereal hot summer day of dripping guitars and shakers.Side 2 begins with What Grows, an unabashed rocker with snarling, spiraling guitars and a chugging undertow that clocks in at a perfect 3 minutes. Sunday Night slows...