The start to "Pat Pat," Pressed And's opening song of this session makes me think that I've just set myself down in the couch and put on an episode of Entourage, the muted swirling of a storm siren, or an audio taping of the northern lights, or whatever it is, pouring out. Just as quickly, that feeling is dashed, ripped to pieces actually, when the ethereal vocals are punched in. Mat Jones vocal manipulation and sound modulation turns his phrases into all variants of spacey communication from Mars, the smoky pleas of a tripped out Postal Service record that's way more Dntel than Ben Gibbard and repetitive lives that are flares and blown out in all sorts of manners of anguish and ecstasy.
Jones, along with bandmate and North Carolinan college buddy, Andrew Hamlet, string together what sound like calendar days that have amounted to very little and wedded them with some kind of magic touch that turns all of the blankness into passable intrigue. Suddenly, these nothing days, which were spent with the television on, feet up on the sofa and nothing but a frozen pizza to eat are transformed into a soundtrack that's more chillwave bachelor pad-worthy. It's music that should be played in that in-between time between bedtime and whatever might have gotten the blood pressure rising, whatever might have been the last hurrah or last call of the evening.
It's the night ravens gliding in for the night, the owls hooting some and the buzz just hanging around, silently in the darkness. There's little light and there's little light needed to get through these tiny, warm winds. The songs hit like a tuft of feathers, fresh off the body of a dazed bird - perhaps one that's just flown smack into a clean and clear window or one that's drunk itself silly on cider. They hit like the recognition that you've been sitting in one single place for so many hours that you feel dirty for it and yet, what else could you be doing? You think hard and you come up with so little that you feel better and you just keep listening for you find the laziness, the television set, what's left of the drunken bird and these woozy songs amusing and something of a tonic.