CFM – Soundtrack To An Empty Room
Charles Francis Moothart’s catchy garage-punk debut saw the Mikal Cronin associate successfully break out from a decade of turns as a member of The Epsilons, the Ty Segall Band, FUZZ, The Moonhearts, Culture Kids and GØGGS. Partying hard, 2017’s follow-up, Dichotomy Desaturated, was the multi-instrumentalist’s second LP under the initialism CFM and it picked up pretty much where its predecessor left off, which is to say in thrall to the same sounds as Ty Segall. It’s simple serendipity that the latter first started ripping in this fashion around the same time as the former and, it turns out, they both have a lot of music in them.
Following a similar format to Dichotomy Desaturated by sequencing mid-paced psychedelia and melancholy changes in tack in between thick streams of riffs, Soundtrack To An Empty Room is full of crunchy guitars and chewy fuzz, its solid running order bolstered by spacey soloing, punchy drums and marauding bass tones. The tempo drops for those pastoral, acoustic meanders and, alongside “River”, which brings the album’s breathy Beatles influences to a head, they’re welcome breathers, but Moothart remains at his best when cranking it loud. Be that on Black Mountain-sized psych-rock ripper “Lovely”, for example, or on the Black Sabbathesque “Sequence”, which comes from a harder, faster place than ever before, Soundtrack To An Empty Room again proving Moothart to be every bit the equal of Segall as they go.
Best track: “Lovely”
~Soundtrack To An Empty Room is released 26th July 2019 via In The Red.~