Mattress – Eldorado 12” EP (Malt Duck)
Bedroom rockabilly, or what a sober Jim Morrison would be doing if he had continued to partake full-steam ahead until around Y2K. Eldorado is classic DDIY (literally – this is a vinyl reissue of his first CD-R, dating back to 2006), effects keyboard-reliant song type things with vocals that seem to be making fun of Danzig and Alan Vega, or touched people. It’s the local art guy that incidentally chose music as his medium. His thesis is to incessantly create and his inspiration is the perpetual lack of any coherent fan base. There is at least one in every town, with their yearly message board diatribes bent on uncloaking the secret society of those in town that can “get shows.” Stillborn zinger factories and purveyors of inoperable puns (underground rappers do this too), they implement phrasememes and malapropisms in vain, as they operate on only one level.
Hey, not all dorks are smart, some are just dorks. But it is all about context. Hypothetically, if I was on a grueling, ill-attended month-long US tour with my, say, mid-to-low level indie rock band and Mattress were opening for us in Eureka, California, it is a safe bet that there would be some R. Stevie Moore inspired rhetoric surrounding his performance in a very drunk van on the way to the hotel. And with that said, what really makes this much different than a John Maus, other than Mattress not understanding the value in lo-fi swashbuckling? Maybe it is who you know. But don’t worry Mattress, you will get yours. I would be ahead of my time to give Eldorado an unabashedly glowing review in the present. This is not the music people like in real time, but rather the music people will be digging up in 30 years, vying for the rights to reissue it. (http://www.maltduckrecords.com)
(Elizabeth Murphy)
