•
Rating:
Down on the Road by the Beach, published in 1983, is the first and only album by Steve Hiett, mainly remembered as a British fashion photographer, but also a musician and composer. The genesis of the album is quite unusual: it was composed by Hiett during a short stay in Japan along with the Moonriders, a Tokyo band, and was distributed exclusively in the Land of the Rising Sun, bypassing the international market.
Indeed, starting with Hiett's cover shot, it would be easy to associate the album with the vast city pop production from the coastal scene that was thriving in Japan at that time. Yet, in Hiett's fantastic shot, the shadowed woman and the oversaturated blue gradients are elements imbued with a metaphysical quality that cannot leave one indifferent. It is a shot that perfectly describes the music contained within the grooves of this record.
Hiett distances himself from the varied new wave playbook that was all the rage at the time to recover the brilliant yet melancholy surf rock sound of Santo & Johnny, blending it with very light psychedelic touches and deep dives into ambient pop music. The arcane genetic anomaly of Down on the Road by the Beach thus proves to be a precursor of sounds that would be revived in the years to come, for example by the hypnagogic pop current of Ariel Pink, Cindy Lee, and the like. It is an album of rare beauty, at times able to evoke atmospheres similar to those favored by the Badalamenti/Lynch duo, specifically in recreating a retro atmosphere where the blinding sunlight, which exposes everything, coexists with unfathomable areas of shadow.
Loading comments slowly
