Most records that clock in at a hefty 24 tracks tend towards either the bloated and self-indulgent or the meandering and directionless. Oregon’s Quasi succeed where others have failed, however, by never really having had a direction. This is a good thing. ‘Mole City’ careers between giddy pop melodies (‘Blasted’), lo-fi punk charms (‘Double Deuce’) and ultimate genre-splicing (the lolloping jazz piano and fuzzy guitars cast ‘Fat Fanny Land’ as a bizarre kind of ragtime for slackers), often all in the space of one track. There’s little, if any, regard for structure or convention, meaning that ‘Mole City’ could be five tracks long or 50 and still happily exist in a brilliantly idiosyncratic bubble all of its own.
Lisa Wright