Mental images from the state of Missouri usually depict such American staples as long stretches of highway, Waffle House, and Harry S. Truman. For those who know the Midwest mostly for its great plains and dabbling in hillbilly behaviors, musicians like Kansas City, Missouri’s Motorboater come as quite a shock.
Creating clubby and calm electronic beats under the aforementioned pseudonym, Dan Eaton brings a certain kind of energy makes it impossible not to shake it, or at the very least, bob your head. Described by Eaton’s label, The Record Machine, as “the kind of jam that finds all your joins needing constant motion” Motorboater is definitely a creation of the synthesizer-keys-computer frenzy that has hit music as of late- and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hot of the presses just today is Motorboater’s debut EP P/U Yr Heart, six tracks of electronic/dance that seems to fall between the cracks of the current major definers of this genre. While tracks like “Seeing Things” give an allusion to Vampire Weekend’s recent stint, Contra, P/U Yr Heart also takes a shine to the beats of MGMT, though Eaton’s sound is far less psychedelic than the other group’s East Coast effort.
While all the tracks on this album do have a certain kind of cohesion, stealthily sliding into one another at their beginnings and ends, there’s also a subtle diversity in P/U Yr Heart. From the chirpy, almost jungle beat sounds of starting track ‘Take Yrself Out’, to “Je Mange Titties” where we essentially get a clubbier version of Mates of State, Eaton has done a fine job giving this album range without bringing anything too far out of left field. “Francois’ Dream”, a track we already see Motorboater listeners are getting all a twitter over, has a notable frantic trill right out of a television dream sequence throughout the song that we couldn’t help but shimmy to. One would think with all this synth that an 80’s new-wave vibe would be inevitable, but it’s only in “Semifinalist” that we get the wah-wah effects and bathroom acoustics so common to that genre.
As a whole we have to say that Motoboater’s debut is a good start, albeit a little safe, but it has definitely peaked our interest in this Kansas City musician, and we look forward to seeing what else Eaton comes up with in his career.
Motorboater Online:
Myspace
The Record Machine
Download Motorboater’s Remix: You Belong With Me (Taylor Swift Vs. Uffie First Love Mix)
