One of Remezcla’s most awaited productions of 2015 has already arrived: It’s the psychedelic kraut album Looks by none other than L.A. hustlers Prettiest Eyes. After going out victorious from the first edition of Viva El Ley Festival with a highly memorable set (because everyone knows the party won’t start ’til a naked guy puts a pair of glasses up his ass), these guys finished their first LP, filled to the brim with lo-fi debauchery and abrasive distortion.
Weird fittings aside, the album works as both a strong contribution to Puerto Rico’s booming rock scene, and a mind-bending genre evolving on its own. These songs push the limits of sonic uproar created not only through typical guitar riffs, but by using keyboard patterns, voice-altering devices, and thumping bass lines to deliver their messages of inebriated delusions and hard partying.
The first half of Looks perfectly captures their no-frills attitude. Toward the second half, songs become a little bit more complex. Take for instance “El Huelebicho,” an unmistakably Boricua expression featuring none other than AJ Dávila, the main man of the island’s garage movement, for a song rooted in punk but flirting with blues, entirely sung in Spanish. Or “Sorry,” clocking in at almost two minutes of a mesmerizing pattern that ends the album on a high note. Other songs like “LSD,” “The Eye,” and “Out of Control” solidly deliver that kind of sweaty punk spirit present throughout the entire production.
Go ahead and take a plunge into Prettiest Eyes’ noisy debut. It becomes more and more addictive every time you hear it.