Like lots of folks in LA, jazz musician Alex Brettin is from “somewhere else.” (Chicago, actually.)
But, one listen to Brettin’s Mild High Club and at first you’ll think he’s just from “way out there” and then you’ll conclude he is undoubtedly puro Los Angeles.
His hazy, sunshine superman sound can only come from having drunk of the waters of the LA River…if not at the very least from having scooped some into his water pipe.
A player on Ariel Pink’s “Pom Pom“ and set to open for Mac Demarco on some up coming dates, Brettin is a stone in the Zen Garden of LA Slack Funk Psychedelia.
His Stones Throw 7″ “Window Pane” is a lovely Rundgren-esque, dissolving starlight peppermint of a track.
And the B-Side “Weeping Willow” is a dizzying blur of sonic pop saudade, but not about something devastating like a lost love. More the sound of staring at and mourning the loss of a dropped ice cream cone.
Mild High Club’s sound is something like the sonic equivalent of Inherent Vice’s hapless protagonist “Doc” Sportello having a good day smoking on his porch watching the passersby, instead of one where he gets lost in absurd din of Los Angeles drugsexmoneypowerpolitics.