Dignan Porch – Deluded

Following his home made debut LP, Tendrils, on hip NY label Captured Tracks, Tooting’s Joe Walsh, aka Dignan Porch, returns with his follow up EP, titled Deluded. Half recorded at home and half in the studio with Lovvers’ Henry Wither manning the dials, Deluded continues in the same melody driven slacker fuzz vein as the earlier offering but this time includes a full band line up and a fuller sound.

Dignan Porch - Deluded

Even though it clocks in at just shy of 20 minutes in running time, the record does contain eight tracks, so although being an EP, it falls somewhere in the grey area entitled ‘mini-album’. Bands of the lo-fi genre could easily pass this record off as a decent album, but as an EP demonstrating the talent of Dignan Porch, this record is very, very promising.

The sound of Dignan Porch has changed slightly since their  90 second debut single ‘On A Ride’, which resembled MGMT recording a cover of an early Pavement track through a four track tape recorder. The new sound of the band is best demonstrated by the centrepiece and standout track ‘Stream’, which starts off in an effortlessly loose manner and suddenly bursts into a hyperactive, searing riff that captures the imagination in an instant and whisks us off to another plain all together. The sleepy boy/girl harmonies and raw guitar smatterings of the verses carry us unsteadily along as the song crashes back into time as each new bar begins.

It’s this ever so slightly unsettling, primal, Velvets-style hammering out of rhythm on guitar and drums twinned with the light, melody-laden lines of Dignan Porch’s music that attracts me to them. Although underpinning the whole album, the feeling is strongest and most present on ‘footsteps in the snow’, an incredibly laid back and classically cool track toward the end of the record;  punctuated with a sparse and solemn guitar riff, the song bounds along with as much classic blank attitude and drive as the Velvet’s ‘What Goes On’, only way shorter.

Due to it’s aforementioned length, Deluded feels more special than just an EP or a standard full length album – something to be savoured and grateful for, like an unearthed, unreleased demo from a classic band that die hards will cherish and quickly begin to claim is their finest work. The bar has been set for the album.

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