The Fun Years is one of those bands you just assume no one knows about. It’s not like they are totally elusive, complete shut-ins or anything, but they are still pretty quiet about everything — not much in the way of interviews with the group, they never play shows or tour… I am not entirely certain they even live on the same coast. They’ve responded to my e-mails, but their replies are always extremely short and leave me with many questions unanswered. Details! I wanna know DETAILS! And yet, the turntable + baritone guitar drone-duo manages to appear from the ether once every couple of years with a stunner that sells out instantly, having forged a strong and devoted following over two stone-classic drone LPs, 2008’s Baby It’s Cold Inside and 2011’s God Was Like, No, both with the incomparable Barge label. Here is 2014’s installment of said sold-out stunner: One Quarter Descent, this time with Spring Break Tapes! and curiously out on cassette, although this here reviewer is certainly not complaining since the sonic depth the group’s known for somehow sounds deeper than ever, even with the limited scope of tape. The music’s molecular make-up will definitely be familiar to fans of the band, textures slowly woven into a warm blanket of fuzzy bliss, all with that sepia/scratched-lens filter on everything, giving off those faint and glorious feelings of fond (if blurry) memories. With this release, they do a really nice job making their drone three-dimensional; motifs arriving softly, tremolo tones dropping lightly into the mix like rain in a pond, and the subtle ripples drifting off into a distant background as newer guitar refrains gently wash on top. I kind of think of it as like an opposite-ocean, with the waves pushing out into the endless sea… and there’s a beautiful blood-orange horizon out there, by the way, and a sailboat drifting. And a man on the sailboat, all alone, thinking about something. Or someone he misses. He is crying a little bit. Goddamn, it’s fucking gorgeous, and I’m done writing about this album now. It’s the best.
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