Doug Tuttle – It Calls on Me (Trouble In Mind, 2016)

Calling the musings of Doug Tuttle a hybrid of the genre he set out to prefect with MMOSS is not an understatement.  Yet here on It Calls On Me, he seems to have finally gotten a firm hold on his visions, lacing together multilayered haunting harmonies, streaming visions, and finding textures that hark back to the late 60’s and early 70’s, where Tuttle seems to labor over every nuance, and polishing each note in order to create an atmosphere of tight catchy pop songs that gently travel down the same sonic avenues as The Beach Boys, 10CC, and The Byrds … with his jangling twelve sting guitar bringing forth a hallow etherial rich sound, while singing with an almost whispered falsetto that is delightfully weathered, worn, and comfortable.

Tuttle has a way of allowing his music to sound important and personal, drawing you in with a continual series of very listenable unexpected riffs and fuzzy presentations that I can only describe as hallucinogenic snooze rock … and he does it brilliantly.  This is lazy weekend stoner music for a Wednesday night, when all you want is for the chair to wrap itself around you so that you can be lost in your own thoughts, even while others are crashed out around you.

This isn’t the first time others have tried to get here, particularly Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, and Jason Quever of Papercuts … yet to slip effortlessly down the path that Doug Tuttle has envisioned, you have to filter out songs from Sparklehorse and Papercuts, while here on It Calls On Me, you don’t need to do a thing other than to dim the lights, put your feet up, and drift off.

Jenell Kesler/2016