If Can Be

shrimp olympics is the home-recording project of Minneapolis-based singer / songwriter Austin Lombardo. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Austin records each part of each song onto his preferred medium, magnetic tape, resulting in beautiful, crispy lo-fi goodness. For his Bumpy debut, Austin created "if can be", a compilation of carefully chosen songs from the first four shrimp olympics albums, "evenings", "hot meal", "i love money", & "danish breakfast sunday". "if can be" is full of catchy pop sensibility from start to finish. Perky drum machines, shimmering guitars, fried synthesizers, syncopated acoustic drums, playful vocal harmonies, and warbling tape edit sounds abound! Some songs are short and sweet, some are long and epic journeys. All of them showcase the distinctive style of psychedelic pop bard, Austin Lombardo. "the artist is the gardener" celebrates the sacredness of creativity, while also lamenting the absurd requirement to validate one's art through marketing strategy. "sometimes" is both a wonderful love song and a diary entry processing self doubt. "plum" is a bittersweet, difficult goodbye, but a lovely way to end this comp. All the audio has been specially mastered to bring these songs to their best selves for this limited run of 100 tapes.