Peasant Vitality (label)
02 March 2015 (released)
20 February 2015
Mutado Pintado is not afraid. He is a man who laughs in the face of danger. He has cojones of steel and is probably slightly unhinged - These are all conclusions one can make when listening to '336 W 17th St', an album that was clearly not titled with ease of pronunciation in mind.
Referred to as Mutado Pintado's (AKA Clams Baker) first audio biography, '336 W 17th St' is a sonic account of 11 years spent in and out of New York's underbelly, and comes across as an apt illustration of the multitudes and clashes of the unsleeping cityscape.
This incredibly bizarre yet ultimately compelling collection of songs sounds like someone pushed every musical genre on the planet through a mechanical grinder and then regurgitated it on the other side - a risky endeavour that could result in chronic earache, but here it makes for interesting juxtaposition instead.
Navigating the confusing waters of Pintado's musical outpour reveals some carefully layered, intelligent gems, like the opening track 'King of the Worker Bees', or the sentimental yearning of 'The Tick', vaguely reminiscent of a Blur B-Side circa 98.
But this pleasantness is only one facet of an album that screams 'Don't you get comfortable you lazy sod!' in your face just as you thought things were looking rosy - it's brimming with complexity and is often deliberately jarring - the closing track 'Sunday Morning' feels like the hangover pixies coming to bludgeon your brain with a hammer.
Mutado Pintado's cool credentials lie in a devil-may-care attitude to the workings of the industry, a disregard he shares with some of his achingly cool collaborators. It's worth highlighting that Baker is also the vocalist in vinyl-only word-of-mouth electro success story Paranoid London, frontman in Warmduscher alongside Saul and Jack of Fat White Family, and vocalist in Save - his collaboration with Colder's Marc Nguyen Tan.
Whether '336 W 17th St' will become another ultra hyped word-of-mouth I-Knew-It-Before-it-Was-Cool runaway success remains to be seen, but it deserves a listen for its sheer idiosyncrasy. This is probably the most random album you will hear all year.
