White Fence

White Fence crafted albums throughout the 2010s by channeling the most eccentric qualities of 1960s psychedelia and Baroque pop, yielding results that suggested capture on bargain-basement tape later left to warp in sunlight. Tim Presley launched the project as its sole member after prior stints in the Fall and with indie rockers Darker My Love, laying down tracks alone in his bedroom at the outset. As years passed he incorporated additional musicians and moved into proper studios, yielding comparatively refined yet persistently idiosyncratic releases such as 2014’s For the Recently Found Innocent. Presley suspended White Fence activity late in the decade to issue solo material and to collaborate with Cate Le Bon under the name DRiNKS, before reactivating the project in 2018 via Joy, a partnership with longtime associate Ty Segall.

Presley first committed his warped pop-psych material to tape inside that bedroom during 2008 and 2009 while still active in Darker My Love. Woodsist Records issued the resulting self-titled White Fence debut in 2010. The follow-up, 2011’s White Fence Is Growing Faith, retained an essentially unchanged sonic approach. That same year the project also surfaced on Teenage Teardrops with the live cassette Live in L.A. and on Afterlife Records with the single “Harness/The Pool.” An especially prolific stretch followed in the first half of 2012: Family Perfume, Vol. 1 appeared in April and Family Perfume, Vol. 2 in May, both via Woodsist, while the April Drag City collaboration Hair paired Presley with fellow West Coast garage rocker Ty Segall.

Although Cyclops Reap was initially conceived as an archive of unreleased older songs, Presley altered course midstream, transforming the 2013 album into a set of fresh recordings. The band proved capable of carrying its aesthetic onto the stage with volatile immediacy. Castle Face documented this dimension in late 2013 with Live in San Francisco, featuring Jack Adams and Sean Presley on guitar, Jared Everett on bass, and Nick Murray on drums. For the next studio effort Presley exited the bedroom and joined Ty Segall in the latter’s garage to track 2014’s For the Recently Found Innocent for Drag City; Segall and Murray supplied drums, Mikal Cronin contributed piano to one track, and Presley handled the remainder.

Around this period Presley and Cate Le Bon, both recent arrivals in Los Angeles and mutual admirers of each other’s music, formed a friendship. Le Bon entered the White Fence touring lineup on guitar, and the pair soon initiated a separate venture. Under the DRINKS moniker they released the experimental off-kilter psych-rock album Hermits on Holiday on Birth Records in August 2015. Presley simultaneously explored further experimental terrain with the November 2015 Castle Face album of electronic music and sonic oddities issued as w-x. He continued the partnership with Le Bon, who produced and arranged his first proper solo album, 2016’s The WiNK. A second DRINKS record, Hippo Lite, arrived in 2018, after which Presley revived the White Fence name for another joint project with Ty Segall. More exploratory and eccentric than their earlier Hair collaboration, Joy appeared on Drag City in mid-2018. Presley promptly delivered a new White Fence full-length the following January; issued as Tim Presley’s White Fence, the more refined and occasionally ambient I Have to Feed Larry’s Hawk marked the first album under the moniker in four years.