Indian Bummer - Bummer Wars
(Self-Released 2014)
When he's not fronting his goth-tinged noise pop trio, Acab Rocky, or sitting behind the drum kit for Jackie Trash, Canadian lo-fi all-star Sam Wells channels his creative energy into Indian Bummer, his solo side project devoted specifically to "cool music for [his] friends to hang out to". There's nothing particularly weighty about anything on the latest Indian Bummer album, sonically or thematically, but that's the beauty of it. Bummer Wars goes down easy like a Pixy Stix: 8 tracks' worth of pure sugar pleasure, grainy against your tongue. It burns off quickly, but at around a minute per song, repeat intake isn't a problem at all. The album's opener, "Bud", and "We Don't Hang Out Anymore", its immediate successor, bear the velvety, melt-in-your-mouth texture of Belle And Sebastian's mid-90s masterpiece, If You're Feeling Sinister. Wells strumms peppy acoustic chords, matched by smoggy tufts of electric guitar on the former; the latter is marked by a homogenous, gooey ambience set in motion only by sparse snare hits, which makes me think of a vat of chocolate ice cream being churned by whirling metal fins. "I Need A Car" is driven by the blotchy leads that drip over the tinny combination of twangy strumming and the buzz of a hi-hat, a breezy track that I can never truly grab onto before it gets away, however beautifully spare it is. Indian Bummer is an intense sugar high sure to get you through the doldrums of summer, minus the calories!
