Fine Motor - Giant Woman (Exotic Fever)
Add Date: 04/14/2020
Focus Tracks: "Follow You," "Who Will Greet You At Home," "Giant Woman"
FCC: Clean
Formats: NACC Top 200, SubModern, and Triple A
RIYL: The Breeders, Palehound, Courtney Barnett
Artist Info: Giant Woman is the second LP from Reno-via-Philly band Fine Motor. The band’s self-titled 2017 debut LP (also on Exotic Fever) garnered comparisons to Built to Spill, the Breeders, and Yo La Tengo. Giant Woman, however, represents a significant period of growth: expanded instrumentation (including piano, organ, and mellotron), more complex songwriting, and increasingly vulnerable lyrics from singer-drummer Casey Bell.
The album was recorded at Panoramic House in West Marin, CA (Cate Le Bon, Palehound, Sea of Bees, Calexico) and mastered by JJ Golden (Neko Case, Built to Spill). Notably more soulful and dynamic than the band’s first record, the Northern California ocean air lends the album an ethereal quality enhanced by Bell’s breathy vocals and the warmth of a vintage EMT plate reverb, the only effect employed during the mixing process. Opening with the garage-rock anthem “Follow You,” the album covers an array of emotional and sonic territory, as evidenced by the #metoo movement-inspired psychedelic title track. The comparatively quiet song finds Dan Morse layering mellotron flutes and choruses on top of Bell’s nylon-string guitar—itself punctuated by rumbling toms that jump out of the speakers—while Bell wryly observes, “We might be eye to eye now; it’s only temporary.” If you’re left in any doubt that this is Fine Motor’s anti-Trump record, they end it with a cover of Solange’s “Weary,” keeping the Rhodes piano, but giving the song a more organic treatment by replacing the synths with flourishes by guitarist Chris Mays. In the three years that have passed since Fine Motor’s debut record, the band has honed its voice, continuing its evolution into a more agile and cohesive force.
Casey is a founding member of Girls Rock Reno, a feminist youth music camp, and was recently the drummer for Myrrias (based in Philadelphia), whose album was released by Jeff Zeigler’s label, Soft Dystopia. When Casey and Dan relocated to Reno, Casey’s replacement was Steven Urgo from The War on Drugs. In the early 2000s, Dan played in DC post-punk band A Day in Black & White (Level Plane Records), who toured Europe twice and the US three times. Fine Motor is currently holed up at home, eager to play their record release show. But as UK music blog For the Rabbits recently wrote, “When the clouds part and normal musical service is resumed, Fine Motor might just be better placed than ever to make a monumental splash.”