Rose City Band is caught between worlds. First conceived as a semi-anonymous studio project by
Moon Duo's
Ripley Johnson, the band's first recordings were muted and relatively lo-fi renderings of country-leaning psychedelia with
Johnson playing all of the instruments. As the sounds caught on, this approach gradually expanded to live shows and international touring, the stage band digging into the songs with an excitement and force that was absent in the earliest multi-tracked solo efforts. Though fourth album
Garden Party is still a separate entity from the on-stage version of
Rose City Band (with
Johnson still handling a lot of the playing duties himself and enlisting
Moon Duo bandmates
John Jeffrey and
Sanae Yamada to play drums and synths, respectively), it makes a concerted effort to bridge the two halves of the group's personality by injecting some live band energy into the controlled studio environment. A big part of this heightened excitement is the interplay between
Johnson's slippery guitar leads and
Barry Walker's burning pedal steel runs. Opening track "Chasing Rainbows" gets into this straight out of the gate, with
Walker and
Johnson trading licks over a steady country bounce. The song charges full force for a while and then unexpectedly drops its tempo significantly, opening up for a melty second half where the guitar dueling feels more yearning and spiritual than amped up. It's a move that mirrors the dynamics of a live band and recalls the languorous outro jams the
Grateful Dead often got into in a concert setting. "Porch Boogie" has a similar live feel, with
Johnson's unfussy baritone vocals making the song sound like
Yo La Tengo jamming with
Skull & Roses-era
Dead.
Rose City Band's primary lyrical concern has always been taking it as easy as possible, and on
Garden Party,
Johnson continues musing about the joys of summer, the beauty of the natural world, and reaching a place of relaxed contentment. Almost every song references some kind of happiness related to nature, from the bleary early-morning bird feeding and nature hike of gentle acoustic ballad "Garden Song" to the blooming flowers that serve as a foil for decaying love on the jazzy groove of "Mariposa," a song clearly informed by listening to several dozen live versions of
the Dead's live staple "Eyes of the World." As with each album before it,
Garden Party finds
Rose City Band taking incremental steps forward without straying too far from the mellow, stardusted character that they started with. The twinkles of synth, pedal steel workouts, high-definition recording, and complex dynamics are so far removed from the band's self-titled 2019 debut that it sometimes sounds like a different group completely. However,
Johnson's metered songwriting and warm, textural playing keep the project's earthy spirit intact as it continues evolving with every new set of tunes. ~ Fred Thomas
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