Fungi Girls' "Some Easy Magic"

The Fungi Girls are young, and I am old -- old enough to be their biological father, in fact (although still obsessed enough with the noise that was turning me on when I was younger than they to be writing this review).

While it will almost certainly piss off Sky Salinas, the Girls' drummer and leader, to read this, at an age when I was still mainly into having spitting and farting contests with my asshole crew in front of the deli in my town and wondering why the Really Neat Girls wouldn't have anything to do with us, when "being in a band" was mainly an excuse I used to get out of my parent's house to party, Sky and his buddies and bandmates Jacob Bruce (guitar/voxxx) and Deryck Barrera (bass) were undertaking their second coast-to-coast tour of these United States and releasing their second full-length elpee, Some Easy Magic. Now they're back in Burleson, sweating out their last year of high school.

All of which would be a whole lot less impressive if Some Easy Magic were just another pro forma slab of emo or pop-punk spew: suburban kids aping their contemporaries, age-appropriate but nothing more. But what makes it more than that -- what, in fact, makes Sky one of the three most interesting local musos o' the moment in your humble chronicler o' events' opinion (the other two being Drift Era's Jonathan O'Connor and Spacebeach's Torry Finley) -- is the tasty sonic stew these Burleson brats have cooked up here.

For Fungi Girls' sound is redolent of a mythic West Coast that existed a half-century before its creators picked up their instruments. It's a hybrid reimagination, though, rather than sheer stylistic mimicry. You can almost hear the crash of the surf in the Girls' oceans of reverb and Sky's wash of cymbals, at the same time as you can feel the acid creeping up on you in some of their mysterioso minor-key melodies, or when Jacob kicks on the fuzz in "Velvet Days." It's as if the fellas were riding the waves in the morning, then hopping in their woody and heading into town to riot on Sunset Strip in the evening. Comparisons being odious, here's one for you that'll simplify this explanation a bit: Imagine Dick Dale sitting in with the Syndicate of Sound. It's evocative of a past its creators couldn't possibly remember in a way that still manages to sound fresh and immediate, not at all campy.



Download via Bandcamp or cop on CD or sweet, sweet vinyl from Hozac Records (or Doc's, if you're fortunate enough to live in Fort Worth). You'll be glad you did.