James Pants - “Welcome” - CD - [Stones Throw]

On his full length debut with Stones Throw, James Pants absolutely oozes groove. There’s no other way to describe the Spokane, WA DJ/Multi-instrumentalist’s approach to music. Pants deals not in songs and hooks, but grooves that slowly creep at the edges of your brain. This is not to say that Welcome is a hookless album. The synth bass of “We’re Through” and the quietly irresistible vocoder riff of “Cosmic Rapp” will nab the listener like a bear trap on first listen. Rather, these obvious hooks service an atmosphere so thick you can breathe it. James’ layered keys and funked-up beats create an aural world so nasty and sexed up as to be almost pornographic. This strength becomes Welcome’s only major weakness as well. Pants occasionally becomes so enamored with atmosphere that he forgets to come back to earth and bring the listener along or the ride, “Prayers of the People,” in particular, overstays its welcome as more of a 2 and a half minute long experiment than an actual song. Throughout the album, Pants seems to fall in love with his own oddness and the vintage of his synths and sometimes forgets to fall in love with actual songcraft. Still, within the larger album context, “Prayers” makes a lot of sense, and most of Welcome’s finest moments come in the form of a slow creep: sounds that didn’t catch in your head the first time, but pull you further down the rabbit hole with each subsequent listen. The more time the listener gives Welcome, the more likely the listener is to fall in love with the same oddness and sounds that Pants has himself.

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