***THE BLANK TAPES is now and always has been MATT ADAMS, a soft-spoken kid from a Southern California suburb who learned to play practically every instrument a good garage band needs, and then started making beautifully idiosyncratic records on his trusty home eight-track. By the time he left his home in Orange County for San Francisco in 2005, he’d put dozens if not a hundred of his own songs on tape, all lovingly and painstakingly and perfectly recorded in a series of ever more modest bedrooms and sheds. Following years of self-recorded album and EP releases, including work for venerable LA labels White Noise and Burger Records, relentless touring in the US, Japan, Europe & Brazil, Matt Adams and The Blank Tapes return with Vacation, the first ever full Blank Tapes album recorded outside of Adams’ home studio. Full of the kind of three-part harmonies the Wilson Brothers used to love, Vacation has songs that transplant the style and sentiment of immortals like Ray Davies and Robyn Hitchcock (“Earring”) or Kris Kristofferson and Terry Allen (“Working,” “Vacation”) or even Lou Reed (“Pearl,” written about girlfriend and current Blank Tapes drummer PEARK CHARLES the night he met her) and Buddy Holly (the adorable bridge of “Coast to Coast”) or even Os Mutantes on “Brazilia,” a bossa-delic song inspired by Adams’ informal park jam sessions on his Brazilian tour. Vacation is an everything-old-is-new-again album—a record chasing down timelessness in its own time. (STREET DATE - 5/14/2013)