TIM PRESLEY’S WHITE FENCE

Wonderful left-turn from the Californian psychlord, via the Lake District.

Tim Presley has been leaning more towards collaborations of late. Last year saw the double whammy of Joy, recorded with longtime friend Ty Segall, and his second outing with Welsh singersongwriter Cate Le Bon under their Drinks banner. All of which means that we haven’t had a White Fence album for quite some time. I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk is, in fact, his first in five years. It marks something of a departure too, with Presley choosing to build these songs (written in the serene surroundings of the Lake District) around piano rather than his usual mode of expression, the guitar. This gives them a clarity and simplicity that suits the ruminative subject matter. Over a sparse music box motif, the allusive title track finds Presley dwelling on the impulse to feed addiction and ego. The pale psychedelia of I Love You feels like a whimsically sad outcrop of Arthur Lee’s back catalogue, while the protagonist of Phone sounds as lost as he is forlorn. There are a few concessions to Presley’s more familiar avant-skronk, but the real boon is a 16-minute suite of patterned synth loops – Harm Reduction, divided into two parts – that suggests Presley has located his inner Terry Riley.