Tony Molina speaks a plain truth rarely considered by modern musicians. He’s not going to waste your time pontificating on sentimentality when he knows that the very sentiments that power his music will stay with you long after the songs end. The West Bay guitarist’s background in hardcore, metal, and punk., The songs are like some Lennon-McCartney or George Harrison inventing a mode of sincere, world-beating pop expression and concentrating it into a span of seconds. That’s what’s happening here — a resourcefulness that is typically at odds with the kind of guitar mastery you’ll hear within.
You could fit the contents of Tony’s previous releases on Slumberland and Matador onto one side of a 90-minute cassette and still have room left over for the eight offerings on “Confront the Truth,” but would you want it any other way? When Tony sings about “trying to move on but I just don’t know how,” no extension of the time it takes for him to bring that feeling across is going to solve the problem at hand. You’re immediately thrust into the orbit of these songs.
The eight offerings on “Confront the Truth” notch a significant advancement in his style and approach. Almost completely absent from these new songs are the overloaded guitar crunch replaced by gentle acoustic balladry, tasteful Mellotron and piano backing, the kind of musicianship that often takes a lifetime to master. The sadness of this music has precedents in pop’s past, Tony found in those influences that shaped his experience; years upon years of focus and isolation in developing his guitar skills to speak to these truths.
The record’s coda, a highlight reel of Thin Lizzy’s “Banshee,” indicates that the Tony you knew is still in there, but the game has changed, and the rules are entirely his own. Tony Molina is in complete control of his own destiny, and we should all care about where he’s going.
The Fat Angel Sings 