Long based in San Francisco, vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Tony Molina’s stylistic reach spans from hardcore to stripped-back home-recorded acoustic pop.
His new record, On This Day, offers 21 songs in 23 minutes and is a gem leaning to the melodic side of the spectrum, blending folk-pop, chime-pop, and baroque-pop. Molina taps into the essence of these classique sub-genres and works up a succinct, highly digestible whole that positively begs for repeat spins. On This Day is out now via Slumberland Records. The vinyl edition has sold out quickly; until there is a repress, there are compact discs and the digital option.
Many students of classic ’60s guitar pop stylistics home in on the specificity of the era’s high points, and that’s just fine. With them, every song is constructed as a full-bodied radio single that never was, and in turn, every album is loaded with potential singles. That can make for some mighty fine listening if the songs are truly up to snuff and have something to communicate in terms of inspiration over imitation.
Tony Molina can certainly conjure up the sound of ’60s pop, be it baroque, folky, or jangling, at its catchiest. On This Day attests to this, and in particular the folk-pop of “FC ’23,” the suburban garage band Bacharach of “Faded Holiday” (complete with trumpet by Ladybug Transistor’s Gary Olson), the rays of sunshine glistening on the fringes of “Lie to Kick It”’s emphatic chiming, the Brit-folk gentleness of “Despise the Sun,” and the explosive near freakbeat of “Have Your Way.”
However, Molina’s sheer brevity in song construction establishes this LP, which is Molina’s fifth full-length record released under his birth name since 2009 and the Embarrassing Times cassette, as landing a bit afield of classic ’60s pop’s general norms; Molina isn’t striving to regurgitate the abovementioned specificity but rather, he bends it into a flowing gush of inspired songs that emerge to quickly get their hooks in and then waste no time in winding down and making way for more.
The sweetest twist with On This Day is that nothing registers as underdeveloped. The album reinforces Molina as a legitimately solid songwriter with exceptional taste.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
