Doug Tuttle – Pinecone

Throughout the harrowed edges of the 2020 pandemic, Doug Tuttle’s Pinecone EP was born from hours spent whiling away the time in an ever-increasing apprehension. As the uncertain landscape outside frayed and unraveled, Tuttle turned his task towards songwriting constructed around stripped-down melodies and simple, self-soothing repetition. Like a half-recalled tune that sticks in your head or a mantra meant to focus the mind, each of these five songs is steeped in the nostalgic remembrance of better times set against a wobbling, unreliable reality. At times adrift in cyclical jangly pop as on “Lead Mask,” shimmering, affected piano and sun-blistered guitar as on the hook-y “Weak Ends,” or thoroughly steeped in wavering, grief-laden guitar slide as on “Darkness Under Blight,” Pinecone EP feels comfortably well-worn from back and forth pacing, or rubbed smooth like a worry-stone carried in the pocket. Guitarist, vocalist, producer, and songwriter Doug Tuttle’s first band, Mmoss, was a deeply psychedelic project and when it split, Tuttle shifted musical gears. Recording in a home studio, Tuttle made records using various folk/rock, psych, and classic rock elements; his first two were lo-fi takes on melancholy psych pop that featured his buzzing guitar and mournful vocals. By the time of 2017’s Peace Potato though, he’d switched gears and began crafting mid-fi versions of mainstream ’70s rock that wouldn’t sound out of place next to Tom Petty on a playlist.