He may sound like a character from Terry Gilliam’s 80s cult satire Brazil but MMOSS’s former guitarist is a gentle sonic renegade worthy of focus. That New Hampshire band made just two albums of dreamy, improv-fuelled psych before splitting in 2013, and Tuttle continues their trip with 11 tracks of pretty, West Coast serenading.
At the most far-out end of this record is the super-flanged Where You Plant Your Love and the languorous, shoegazey We Could Live. It sounds very hippie and carefree, but it’s not all sunny days and lazing in the long grass.
On Turn This Love, I Won’t Do and I Will Leave a certain melancholy settles, and some of Laurel Canyon’s finest come to mind, including modern exponents such as Jonathan Wilson. Tuttle’s Stephen Stills-like dirty/jangly fretwork only adds to that atmosphere.
His sound harks back to the roots of experimental guitar pop – The Beatles, Byrds, Zombies et al are all reference points. Good on him for opting for melodic structures rather than an overload of distracting effects.
Tuttle could have taken MMOSS’s blueprint and exploded it across the universe, but his relative restraint leaves room for expansion on his album(s) to come.