Tim Presley
The Wink
Release Date: Sep 16, 2016
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Neo-Psychedelia
Record label: Drag City
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Album Review: The Wink by Tim Presley
Great, Based on 6 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
Tim Presley is finally making a name for himself. After several records under the acclaimed by still unsung White Fence moniker, Presley's new album The Wink strips him of not only his former moniker but also much of its sonic identity. Where White Fence plays a more raucous, fuzzy, crunchy sound, Presley's work under his own name here is much less fuzzy and much more peculiar.
Based on rating 4/5
As can often be the case with his recent collaborator (and on his debut solo effort, producer) Cate Le Bon, Tim Presley’s songs exist just around the corner. Their melodies – nationless and free – are half-formed, lyrics jar with imagery lost as soon as you grasp it, but the cumulative effect is charming. The Wink is a ragbag selection of tunes and ideas in the best possible sense, somehow gelling much better than Le Bon and Presley’s joint effort last year (as DRINKS).
Based on rating 7.8/10
On last year’s DRINKS, Tim Presley and Cate Le Bon threw out the rock rulebook and forged their own scrappy tools of invention. Wielding their guitars like crudely hewn spades, the newly formed duo tilled indiscriminately through history, splicing krautrock with hippie folk and welding inside jokes to piercing proto-synths. Partially inspired by Soul Jazz’s Punk 45: There Is No Such Thing As Society Vol 2 compilation, the agitated vibe mussed Le Bon’s usual tidy surfaces on this year’s Crab Day, and returns to scare every trace of classic rock out of Tim Presley’s solo debut, The Wink, which Le Bon produces.
Based on rating 7/10
Under the name White Fence, Tim Presley released a lifetime's worth of woozy, wheezy bedroom psych-pop nuggets in just a few years, enough so that he needed to branch out and try different stuff before he got into a rut. Hence, his experimental electronics project w-x and the weird duo album made with fellow traveler Cate Le Bon under the name DRINKS. Working with Le Bon proved so easy and worthwhile that Presley chose to have her produce and arrange the first album he released under his own name, 2016's The WiNK.
Based on rating 6/10
Eighteen years ago, singer/songwriter/guitarist Tim Presley fronted the Nerve Agents, a hardcore L.A. outfit. He mellowed somewhat leading Darker My Love, a neo-psychedelic band that blended woozy melodies, layered instrumental attacks, and dense production into two punchy records. They even opened for the Fall on their disastrous 2006 American tour.
Opinion: Excellent
Tim Presley — The Wink (Drag City)The Wink is Tim Presley’s first album under his own name after making umpteen records as or with White Fence, W-X, Model American and Drinks. How seriously we should take this transition to solo artist is open to question; not only is this a guy who switches identities at will, look what he’s called the record. It’s probably most significant to note that this is the second LP that he’s made with Cate Le Bon, fellow student of not-quite-right pop and equal partner in Drinks.
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