Stream: Talk in Tongues, ‘Always All the Time’

Kevin Bronson on May 15th, 2015

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The best thing about the debut album from L.A. quartet Talk in Tongues is how it doesn’t drown in its own sound. In connecting the dots between ’60s and ’70s psychedelia and the Creation Records bands and their U.K. offspring, “Alone With a Friend” keeps its above water, just the right amount of fuzz, jangle, reverb and backbeat (and with serviceable enough harmonies) to make the music seems as if it could only have come from the Byrds’ home turf. Although the quartet — singer-guitarist McCoy Kirgo and Garrett Zeile, bassist Waylon Rector and drummer Bryan DeLeon — had been together less than a year when they made the record, it sounds meticulous too. Kevin Augunas (Cold War Kids, Nick Waterhouse, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros) produced, and “Alone With a Friend” is out next week on Fairfax Recordings. In a year that’s already seen the release of some stellar psych-rock/jangle-pop/shoegaze, especially from L.A. bands (Gateway Drugs, Strange Babes, Avid Dancer and Winter come to mind), Talk in Tongues’ debut is one of the finest.

||| Stream: “Always All the Time” and “While Everyone Was Waiting”