INDIE

Named after the mountain that’s home to Los Angeles’ famous observatory, the Radar Bros’ frontman Jim Putnam’s first solo project is an appropriately spaced-out and pleasantly retro-sounding recording. The eleven largely instrumental tracks composed, recorded and engineered to the nth (as in noodling) degree by Putnam on his lonesome, evoke The Beach Boys and early Pink Floyd as much as they do the Radar Bros and their slowcore contemporaries. Soft psychedelics, ethereal guitars, acoustic strums and lo-fi drones slip and fade into one another on evocatively titled tracks such as ‘Islands in the Sun’, ‘All Night Every Day’ and ‘Tether in the Haze’. You could argue that it’s 45 minutes of dreamy samey-ness (a similar criticism has been levelled at The Radar Bros), and listened to as 11 separate tracks that is, indeed, the case. Taken as one long, meandering riff, though, Putnam’s eponymous solo debut is a pleasant enough trip.