When I first heard Fool’s Gold in May of this year, I pigeonholed them as trend-hopping Echo Park poseurs who decided to play afro-pop following a weekend of smoking cotton candy kush, snorting Dexedrine, and listening to “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” on repeat. As you can see from the video above, they seemed too happy, too healthy, too Caucasian–particularly in contrast to the other bands playing that night at The Dub Club: Extra Golden, The Meditations, and Yousouppha Sidibe. As I am wont to do, I made a snap judgment and pledged that for all eternity when someone asked about Fool’s Gold, I’d make some snide remark involving pyrite, alchemy, and the great Rift Valley. It probably wouldn’t be funny.
So when Paul Tao, half of the pair behind IAMSOUND, told me his label had signed Fool’s Gold, I kept my mouth shut because no one really wants to be told, “sorry, you just invested in fool’s gold.” However, I downloaded the album and threw in into the vast churning miasma that is my hard drive, next to the hundreds of Gigabytes of African music I own made by actual Africans, ostensibly never to be heard. About a week later, with iTunes on shuffle, an absurdly funky slice of soukous guitars came on. I checked to see who it was by. Uh-huh.
The rest of their self-titled debut is similarly excellent. The decision by front-man Luke Top to sing in both English and Hebrew, rather than adopting some hideous imitation accent was a wise one, offering the band a strain of exoticism and opacity that its promo photos lack. The authenticity argument is moot when you’re doing you, and there’s little contrived about Fool’s Gold. I interviewed the band’s lead guitarist Lewis Pesacov, earlier this summer for a piece I wrote on Foreign Born (he does guitar duty in both outfits), and his understanding of African music is formidable. This isn’t a case where he copped The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, swiped a few riffs and grew a ‘stache. This is a dude whose dad moved to LA in the 1970s to try to become a reggae producer. Legitimate. Liberated from unfair comparisons, Fools Gold remain at the forefront of groups adopting African guitar textures to the “indie aesthetic.” Just don’t let that description fool you.
MP3: Fool’s Gold-“Surprise Hotel”
MP3: Fool’s Gold-“Nadine (Memory Tapes Remix)”
