- Order another blue lagoon and pull up a chair at Fennec's hip-hop bossa nova tiki lounge.
- Speaking to Rolling Stone a couple of months ago, sample aficionado Fennec described how he wrote his most recent album to capture the memory of a night out at an Indianapolis tiki bar before Covid-19. Although I've never been to the Strange Bird, listening to a couple of good days, you can practically feel the sticky wood under your elbows as you try to catch the bartender's attention amidst the blare of fuzzy surf rock. The album is humid and laid-back, as Fennec chops everything from Southern rap to bossa nova over unhurried house rhythm. a couple of good days is for, as the sample at the end of opener "girl" puts it, for "the sunnier side of your life."
Fennec's sound has gradually moved from post-chillwave beat-splicing to something closer to house music proper. If his previous two albums, 2020's free us of this feeling and 2018's So That I May See You Again were Fennec coming to terms with house conventions, a couple of good days is the sound of him feeling confident enough to throw out the rulebook.
The American producer recently packed in his day job as a lawyer in Indiana and enrolled in graduate school in Austin. The Texas sun seems to have done him some good. His other albums have been heavy on the melancholy, but the mood here is irreverent and carefree. "Fonzi" is like if Soundstream traveled back in time to hang at Cass Elliot's house in Laurel Canyon, a blissed out collage from across the AM dial with a chunky disco bassline and euphoric guitar strumming. Things are even stranger on "russian dressing," which sounds like Jake The Rapper remixing a polka track at Bar25's closing party and adding a touch of dub techno to round the whole thing off.
He might be becoming a house producer, but all of Fennec's unique tics are still there. He has a particular penchant for bossa nova-style bongos that he sprinkles into the disco-leaning tracks like "a lil more conversation" and "aperol spritz," and his brand of hip-house recalls someone like DJ Slyngshot, mixing tough percussion with melodramatic melodies. On "bounce" he isn't content with the sadboi piano line, throwing a gaudy sax into the mix, while the sticky "t2m" is like a chopped 'n screwed Avalanches track.
a couple of good days is the vacation that you never want to end, a holiday from quotidian vibes. Fennec builds a distinct atmosphere with a remarkable variety of samples, which he makes clear in the acknowledgements that accompany each of his releases. He flexes his underground bonafides listing the likes of Omar-S, Steffi and Shinichi Atobe, but he isn't afraid to tip his hat to everyone from Cat Power to Vampire Weekend to MF Doom.
This expansive approach to pop culture reminded me of a recent essay by Mitch Therieau on the "Novel Of Vibes." There, Therieau writes, "it is a sort of therapy-by-atmosphere, a self-administered cure that works by placing the watcher/listener/user in a fictional space suffused with an overall vibe, a vaguely felt sense of aesthetic unity among diffuse and low-intensity sensations." Thereieau's point is meant to be critical, but it's one I kept coming back to. While most albums trade in vibes, this seems to be Fennec's explicit MO, from the album title to its irreverent sampling to its SoundCloud genre tag ("fun house"). Nothing here is meant to be taken too seriously and it's that overall aesthetic fuzziness that makes this record so, well, vibey.
Tracklist01. girl
02. aperol spritz
03. bounce
04. t2m
05. fonzi
06. bahamamama
07. partyhop
08. o2o
09. wowie
10. russian dressing
11. honda with my bb
12. bnb
13. a lil more conversation
14. marijuanita