Spooky Action At a Distance by Lotus Plaza

This is the second album from Lotus Plaza, the solo nom de plume of Lockett Pundt, better known as the guitarist in Deerhunter. Pundt has penned a number of the best songs on the last two Deerhunter albums, and his first album, "The Floodlight Collective" was a tour de force of guitar pop smarts. He has the uncanny ability to build soaring, melodic gems from simple musical phrases; a möbius strip of a guitar line and repeating clipped drum roll in "Strangers"; a tribal drum beat holding down the foundation on "Out of Touch"; two acoustic guitar chords and a slight bit of snare as the basis for "Dusty Rhodes"; a series of slowly descending piano chord scales on "Jet Out of the Tundra". There is a wide variety of songs and moods here, from unabashed rockers such as "White Galactic One" and "Monoliths", acoustic laced introspection on "Dusty Rhodes" and "Black Buzz", to the lysergic electronics of "Remember Our Days". "Spooky Action at a Distance" is a wide angle view of what should be the zeitgeist of contemporary guitar pop. ℗ 2012 kranky