The Nude Party
Look Who’s Back
All the decaying villas in the South of France were probably booked. They likely weren’t in the budget anyway. Intending to release Look Who’s Back on a DIY shoestring, The Nude Party didn’t have the resources to go wherever they wanted to record their fourth LP and live out their fantasies of indulgent Exile on Main St. excess and carefree creativity. There was a less desirable option.
Opening his Joshua Tree, California, living room to them, producer Michael Rault gave the freewheeling seven-piece outfit the run of the place, the beer flowing as they dreamed in cosmic country color, flinging open the windows to let in some beachy, breezy ‘70s pop — even though they were nowhere near the ocean — and leaning into their assured, Rolling Stones-style swagger. It wasn’t exactly The Gilded Palace of Sin, but they made do.
Gram Parsons’ twangy presence is felt in the shuffle and exquisite flowing richness of “Sweetheart of the Radio,” with its wafting pedal steel and nostalgic yearning, and the title track’s slow, rootsy drawl, which practically wakes up hungover. It’s still dressed in the western embroidered suit of spangled guitar, simmering organ, bleary-eyed piano, sweeping acoustic strum, and Laurel Canyon vibes it was wearing the night before, eventually striding confidently through a gold rush of full-throated vocals and wild whoops and crashing Americana crescendo. All locomotive bluster at first, “Taking Hangers off the Line” eventually lounges around in similar neon-lit sounds.
Not so faint are the kaleidoscopic echoes of Beachwood Sparks heard throughout, as Look Who’s Back, knocked in just a few days, which explains its charming, upbeat immediacy, revels, too, in garage-rock romps and springy electro-pop buoyancy. That’s where the heady “Carolyn” comes in, its stabbing riffs, howling, psychedelic swirl, and shaking, primal groove getting lost in spacey ecstasy, while a strutting “Walk That Walk” moves casually like Jagger across a vice-ridden gauntlet of temptation and long-shot hopes, trying to stay grounded and stomping on the terra all at once.
Never falling prey to outsized ambition, The Nude Party floats through Look Who’s Back with a happy-go-lucky attitude, a bit wistful at times but usually in high spirits. It doesn’t feel as if the record was hastily assembled, the smoothed-out, gently lapping mariachi roll of “Juarez” testifying to The Nude Party’s easy, communal chemistry and eclectic heart and soul, and a rowdy “Honey for the Barflies” chops it up about failure and false bravado, excited jabs of keyboards going off like firecrackers. More heartfelt, a languid “Love Is Electric” gets sentimental and real about meeting that special someone, eliciting warm smiles.
These prodigal sons should come around more often.
