It’s no Avalanches-length wait, but the 7 years since the release of Clive Tanaka’s debut have been oddly quiet (bar a couple remixes early on), to the extent that I figured he was gone for good. I’m not sure of the backstory that led to this standalone compilation track, but “Empty Sidecar” picks up right where Jet Set Siempre No. 1 left off. It’s a warm, welcoming track: built of simple pieces and plenty of reverb, and as usual with Tanaka a fantastic sense of dynamics. “Empty Sidecar” may go nowhere but it’s transportive, layering new instruments into the mix or dropping everything out with no warning; “surprising” isn’t the right word for so mellow a song, but Tanaka’s strength remains a kind of comforting unpredictability. Here’s hoping we’re about to find out that he still has more up his sleeve.
Listen, I don’t know where you live or how invested you are in the bar scene there but tiki is back, it’s been back. I like bars, I like cocktails, but I really hate kitsch, especially when there’s no ironic distance. When I was a kid, there was this restaurant in the city called Ed Debevic’s where the waitresses dressed in poodle skirts and served on roller skates and cussed you out for taking too long to order. I obviously never wanted to eat there and my question is why does a place like this have to exist? It’s inconvenient to waitress on skates, it’s rude to be snapped at by strangers -- who fucking likes this? So, tiki -- the culture of tiki is extremely weird but the drinks are really good. I’ve even come around on the drink accouterments because I can see there’s a finesse and a craft to it, but the whole Hawaiian shirt and ukulele jams bar decoration is still retro in an unpleasant way, like we’re at war and occupying the South Pacific. My solution? Make the tiki drinks at home. This is a lot of work but it means I have total control over my environs and can introduce a new aesthetic strain to the mix of rum and fruit juice. My favorite, by far, is retro-futurism. Todd Terje is perfect with tiki served in a Chicago condo, but the smoothed out spaciness of “Empty Sidecar” is equally transportive.
