HARRISON SMITH sits with his thin arms and legs folded neatly under the table, one eye squinting in the shifting sunlight. We’ve finally met up after a series of missed connections—the latest being that 20-year-old Smith had to return home to Washington for wisdom teeth surgery—to talk about his band Turtlenecked’s debut full-length, Pure Plush Bone Cage.
Smith is Turtlenecked and Turtlenecked is Smith. Both are spare but intentional, rambunctious but removed, a bit bratty but magnetic. Smith has a uniform aesthetic; his press photo depicts him in cream-colored linens, leaning against a bare cream wall, offset only by a Smiths record purloined from his college radio station and a stack of books, spines turned out to reveal titles like Infinite Jest and Naked Lunch. This image encapsulates the heart of Turtlenecked: The stack of references and symbols threatens to overtake the creator. Turtlenecked derives nervous energy from this high-wire balancing act.
Smith enjoys order. He laughs as he describes a former roommate as living in a “trash heap,” and mentions that “every once in a while I’ll just clean it all up… it’s very satisfying for me to start new songs with a clean new Logic file.” Each song on Pure Plush plays like a clean slate: “I Always Suspected I Was Watching Television” sounds like Gang of Four colliding with an anthemic resolution from the Strokes; “Weakling” recontextualizes the careening harmonies of Dirty Projectors against a svelte Wire-esque thrum.