Smiling Disease
Beach Bodies: 2008-2014
Memorials of Distinction
Street: 04.05
Smiling Disease = Kurt Vile + The New Year

This compilation is low-key sharp the way a fishhook stuck slyly in your dad’s khaki pants is before he sits down and gets a snare to the thigh. It’s hidden and subtle, but with a grabbing edge. Beach Bodies is the six-year compilation of the solo works of Oliver Moss (Smiling Disease), of Evans the Death, and is an impressively cohesive whole refined and glistening with catchy lines of shoegaze mixed with a ghostly sense of some cousin of psych. It’s a far step away from Evans the Death, but goes to show the ease with which he strays from pop-rock. All of it fresh and untainted, tinny, sirening songs like “Parish Council” and my favorite, “Mild Detergent” spin in homogenous circles with droney “Intro” and lo-fi tracks like “The Klingon Race.” Experimental and varying, yet focused, it’s refreshing and doesn’t go stale. –Erin Moore