"inside my own entertainment nooooow..."
The delightfully lo-fi "Trashers" from Fayetteville, Arkansas based John Charles, and from his 2021 full length "Around", feels like a smashed (drunken) amalgam of Sparks, the gloriously high Beatles, the exquisitely inebriated Kinks and John Cleese's funny walks. This description might make you think that I find it funny and while it is fun, it is amazingly, wickedly, artful, lovely and quirky. There is a Brit pop anti pop sense, a good bit of Man Man madness and a surreal escapism.
John Charles is the moniker of Kris Mastin who writes and records all this by himself and he has this to share about "Trashers":
"Every year in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the at times pretentious, flawed college town I am from, there used to be a horrendous motorcycle fest called Bikes Blues and Barbecue. The city would flood with an omnipresent rumbling from 10,000 hogs, trikes, crotchrockets, dirt bikes and a small, earnest gathering of vespas. You couldn't escape the noise. Thursday into early Sunday that week, no escape. But, you could get alligator on a stick, so that was something. The festival has waned in the last few years, thankfully, but this song was written and recorded during its peak. The motorcycle noise is underneath the song."
And now I want to see an Official Video of Mastin singing this in a sea of motorcycle madness.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.instagram.com/j0hncharlez/
https://open.spotify.com/track/4XVS6UrSVYnQwoznmuOJnG
https://music.apple.com/us/album/trashers/1595179109?i=1595179115
John Charles is a name I gave to a cop at a sexy-themed party when I was 20. I was wearing my mother's pants. Ever since, I've used it as a moniker for my solo music, inexplicably. But there you have it.
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We get by with a little help from our friends
John Charles, indie rock, brit pop, alt rock, quirky rock, art pop, mad pop, "Trashers", full length, "Around" album, crazy, art rock, singer-songwriter Kris Mastin,
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