Tim Presley was recruited by Mark E. Smith as part of the American contingent to play on The Fall's 26th studio album Reformation Post T.L.C. in 2007 but after just one year, he became another of the numerous 'Fallen'.
Since then, he has spent significant time and energy on resolutely lo-fi records under the moniker 'White Fence' which includes two collaborations with Ty Segall.
In an interview with the Noisey 'zine, he calls the latest instalment of this project "a half sober, half-mentally stabilized written love letter to SF and harmony".
Fog City , one of the key tracks, references both San Francisco's nickname and the singer's blurry-eyed reflections of the city's various charms. Given that the album's enigmatic title denotes the feeding of an addiction, it's natural to imagine that these fuzzy visions are in partly drug-induced.
His sound owes much to primitive garage punk psychedelia together with obvious influences of artists like Eno, Syd Barrett and The Modern Lovers.
The lo-fi production is deliberate and although the piano is the most prominent instrument, Presley freely admits that his playing is not much better than a 5-year-old.
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He started writing songs for this album in a small rural town of Staveley is in the English Lake District while staying with Cate Le Bon. He returned to SF to record, recalling that "I had a fervent dream that Johnny Thunders asked me to be honest and simple with this album".
Simple, it is and what he calls a "poppy stomp" does convey a certain integrity and gives the record a pleasantly loose, free-flowing feel. Key songs are the breezy single Lorelei and an unconventional love song like Indisposed.
After a dozen relative short tunes like these, the album closes, somewhat incongruously, with a little over 16 minutes of repetitive analogue style ambience in two tracks both entitled Harm Reduction differentiated by bracketed subtitles: 'Morning' and 'Street & Inside Mix'.
It's a quirky conclusion that, if nothing else, proves that Presley is at his most interesting when thinking outside the box.
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