City Center - True Waste (2008)

 

Neo-Psychedelia / Psychedelic Folk / Drone

RIYL: Panda Bear, Tip Toes, Happy Family

★★★★

The early days of summer heat always get me feeling nostalgic for the shimmering liquidity of the late '00s reverb-heavy bedroom pop that subsequently gave birth to the entire chillwave genre and this June is no exception. My latest trip down memory lane has me sifting through the discography of City Center, a band whose self-titled debut was one of my favorite records of 2009 and the entire aughts. It turns out that the sample-happy drone-folk duo's output runs much deeper than I remember: in addition to their two official LPs, their discogs page lists a whole slew of limited CDr releases and tour-only cassettes. While the antiquated trend of selling exclusive tapes and vinyl records while touring usually aggravates my obsessive audiophilia, in City Center's case it's a pleasant surprise to encounter so much "new" old material, especially since quite a lot of it is still (surprisingly) available on file-sharing sites for those of us who don't have the means to go back in time and attend one of their shows.

All that aside, 2008's True Waste, the band's true debut, is a curious "EP" for several reasons, the first being that it runs for over an hour: though containing only four "official" songs, the eleven bonus tracks alone exceed the scope of the official LP that soon followed. The second point of intrigue is that, though the CDr is billed as a demo collection, City Center's soon-to-be signature sound (which seamlessly alternates between lengthy, blown-out drone passages and shorter, even more blown-out psych-folk beach melodies) springs forth fully-formed as if the pair had already been working together for years. The demo for "Cloud Center", the one song that went on to appear on the self-titled a year later, sounds almost identical to the refined version, and the rest of the tropically vibing, sand-fuzz acoustic jams could be interspersed among the official album's tracklist with no questions asked. As such, True Waste makes for an excellent companion piece to City Center, which works out perfectly for me as someone who's often paradoxically craving both nostalgia and novelty at the same time.