TIP OF THE TONGUE 19 FEBRUARY 2012
Mark McGuire & Charles Berlitz Presents
Inner Tube
Pacific City Sound Visions 017
LP
£16.99
Aces-up collaboration between Spencer Clark of The Skaters/Monopoly Child Star Searchers/Fourth World Magazine et al and Mark McGuire of Emeralds. Inner Tube presents a series of hallucinated soundtracks to straight-to-video surf movies as a virtual reification of the true teen sound of the boys of summer. Clark produces while playing keyboards, drums, vocals and samples while McGuire contributes guitar, bass, keyboards and drums but most of all this is a guitar record. McGuire’s tone and overall attack is radically different from his work with Emeralds, with Spencer’s production giving it a euphoric firecracker edge as he rips out endlessly wild solos that hang ten on wave after wave of fuzz. As with alla Spencer’s material there’s also a contrary melancholy aspect, the feel of summer ending and youth long since disappeared and a bunch of the tracks are dedicated to tragic teen sports stars like Catch Vicelli, Mark Richards and Michael Doames. The A side pretty much rips it up from start to finish with that amazing fuzztone lighting up the sky while the flip moves into a more muted/sunset vibe with aspects of the first few Neu records married to infinitely riffing keyboards and McGuire’s epic fuzz-saturated testimonials to endless yesterdays in the sun. Co-released between Spencer’s Pacific City imprint and McGuire’s Wagon label, the LP comes with a large full-colour poster of the duo that demands pride of place above the fireplace and a printed colour inner with classic daffy sleevenotes: “A guy from Hemet meets a young girl with a serious lust for Motorcross. He’s been dumped by his longtime High School Hottie, and she’s just fed up with her dull, toid-like insurance salesman boyfriend. The two train together all day, making jumps from dirt mounds and climbing up hills Wheeli style. At the end of the day they get to the top of the highest peak and watch the sun set...” More than exceeding what it set out to do, this is one of the most euphoric psychedelic guitar records of either of these guys’ careers and the ultimate realisation of Spencer Clark’s vision of the nightside of summertime. Totally addictive, impossibly affecting, simply cannot recommend this enough!
