Tim Presley’s White Fence

★★★ I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk DRAG CITY. CD/DL/LP/MC

Elliptical lo-fi intimacies from connected LA alt-freak.

Presley, a mid2000s alumnus of The Fall who featured on Joy with Ty Segall, and in Drinks alongside Cate Le Bon, here returns to his own alias after a four-year lay-off. The unpredictable ditties on this seventh WF outing were penned on Le Bon’s piano during a sojourn in the Lake District, then patched together, with little care for finesse, with assorted help in San Francisco. Built around a simple, loopedup suspense-thriller piano motif, the opening title track (and what a title!) sets a pervasively puzzling mood: you feel unease, curiosity, but what’s the guy on about? Ducking and diving between ivories and six-string (acoustic, with the odd electric lick: scratchy Beefheartian skank Until You Walk), his reedyvoice makes for a Syd Barrett attempting Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? record, full of compulsive tunes, but ever off-centre.