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1 Don't Know Who We Are
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2 I Like the Way You Walk
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3 Bloodhound
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4 Born with Stripes
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5 Kaleidoscope
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6 West Coast Raga
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7 New Blue Stockings
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8 Ceiling Tan
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9 Oxblood
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10 Bullfrog Blues
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11 Valerie
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12 East Coast Raga
San Diego's The Donkeys strike a balance of smiling, surfer mysticism
and winking, slacker mystique. They reanimate the charming hallmarks of
sunshine-rock past without being sepia-toned retro or bubblegum-cloying.
There is an innate playfulness and honesty to the music they make. It's
a dynamic that has made public champions of keen-eared musicians like
John Darnielle (Mountain Goats) and Craig Finn (The Hold Steady). It was
Darnielle who claimed The Donkeys were benevolent keepers of "The
Antidote" to an unnamed sickness plaguing indie rock. We liked that
sentiment a great deal.
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Pitched somewhere between echoes of '70s country-rock hybrids and a moody, bass-led punch that feels more like the ghost of Joy Division than Gram Parsons, the Donkeys' third album, Born with Stripes, is a quietly enjoyable listen, something where emotions get expressed
with often restrained energy -- but, crucially, never lacking that core
energy to start with, instead of simply disappearing into a haze of
peaceful easy feelings. "New Blue Stockings" is a full-on loungey swing
and kick from 1966, thanks to the keyboards in particular, while the
most blatant moment of fusion could be "West Coast Raga," where a sitar
and guitar part kick things off in equal measure (though the concluding
"East Coast Raga" is understandably not far off in that kind of feel).
The woozily beautiful arrangement always seems on the verge of collapse
in "Kaleidoscope" but constantly follows a central structure, a kind of
psychedelia that doesn't go out of its way to advertise itself as such.
"You are like a movie/Easy to behold!" goes the joyfully group sung
opening of the title track, even as the scratchy-sounding breaks could
be from some garage recording in 1982 as much as 1965. Guitarist Jessie Gulati
often has breaks that slip easily between post-punk skyscrape and
easier-going twang, while hearing a steady rhythm kick backing a roughly
sung coda on "I Like the Way You Walk" shows just how well Sam Sprague goes at handling both ends of the matter -- there's always a place for a good singing drummer in rock & roll and the Donkeys are well along in showing why he and they deserve the greater notice. ~ Ned Raggett, AllMusic