Why I Love White Fence

In our forthcoming physical release, we've asked a bunch of our favourite bands to talk about one of their favourite records, and why they like them. Hearing people talk so passionately about music has always been a key part in my interest in music journalism, I could spend days watching Amoeba's 'What's In My Bag' series. After curating our own little series and reviewing the new Drinks record 'Hermits On Holiday', I couldn't resist the urge to write a little piece on my complete fixation with Tim Presley's most prolific moniker to date, White Fence.

My introduction to White Fence came about two years ago in the form of the 2011 tape 'White Fence - Live in LA'. The second track, 'Who Feels Right?', is where my fascination began. It's a sorta fuzzy, psychedelic, lo-fi punk song with looped, pulsating drums courtesy of Nick Murray, who quickly became my favourite drummer. I was instantly hooked to White Fence's sound, it was like everything I liked about music done in a way that I simply didn't know was possible. At the time when I stumbled across this, fuzzy psych rock was all I was listening to: Spacemen 3, Moon Duo, Hookworms, I was kinda getting bored of the clean side of psychedelic music and moving more towards the distorted and 'harsher' side of it. At the time, White Fence was everything I wanted in a band. It sounded halfway between a NYC underground band and Spacemen 3, so I started making my way through their discography.

Originally I was hooked on the otherworldy sonic virtuosity of the project, but as I worked my way back through the later (and slightly less distorted) material I quickly became aware of Presley's credentials as a lyricist, I'd argue now that there's fewer better songwriters in the world. Take 'It Will Never Be' from the flawless 'Family Perfume' double album, for example. It's one of the most poetic moments across White Fence's discography, a seven minute sprawling surreal garage rock break-up track with lyrics more emotive and faultlessly articulate than most great poetry (Flattered from a distance/But I took a fork then split a hair/Like the Atlantic meets the Pacific/And everything's a young man's dream/And fate is an assertive woman/And you're the broken earring/Beyond repair). There's definitely a more emotive side to White Fence that you might have missed if you'd have just experienced their thunderous live show, the humbling delivery of their 'You Can't Put Your Arm Around A Memory' is another good example.

Presley's work with Ty Segall, The Fall, Darker My Love and Drinks is all pretty astoundingly good, but White Fence has a special place in my heart that would be incredibly hard to replace. Whether you wanna compare them to Spacemen 3 or The Velvet Underground or The Byrds, call it garage rock or psychedelic rock or psych pop, the truth is that the White Fence moniker is perhaps the most important underground name of our time. 


By Marty Hill