If you can?t tell what kind of chicanery Dallas fuzz worshippers Wo Fat are getting up to by the art above and track names like ?The Spheres Beyond? and ?El Culto de la Avaricia,? please check your Kyuss CDs at the door. The Orange amped, moss-covered stoner jams start and don?t stop on their Brainticket debut (second LP overall), Psychedelonaut, a record that begs for the warmth of vinyl like a neglected dog needs water.

The trio make haste with the Captain Beyondisms on the opening title track and offer no let up when it comes to blues riffs and lard-ass grooves. The tones will ring familiar to anyone who?s been around the genre for a while, but growing ever rarer are the American bands playing tried and true stoner music with little pretense of being anything else. It?s hard to hold the simplicity of their sound against them when they perform with such earnestness and dedication to what they do. From ?Enter the Riffian? and the drive down Fu Manchu?s highway on ?Analog Man? — which is literally an ? la Grand Funk proclamation of guitarist/vocalist/principle songwriter/recording engineer Kent Stump?s love of 2? tape — to the us vs. them, Hammond on rye last stand of ?Two the Hard Way,? Wo Fat are crystalline in their drive to make classic, thickly cut, riff-driven rock.

Of course, that would be impossible without the sizable (in terms of both scope and actual volume) contributions of bassist Tim Wilson and drummer Michael Walter, who help Stump push even a straightforward song like the traditional blues number ?Shake ?em on Down? into the weedian stratosphere in preparation for the deeper instrumental journey, ?Not of this Earth.? Wo Fat have saved their psych mostly for side B, and though the jams can take a while to unfold, there are enough part changes and grooves to keep it from getting dull.

Aforementioned closer ?The Spheres Beyond? tops out at a fully-used 12:44 and is the longest track since ?Psychedelonaut? at 10:11. Stump, Wilson and Walter trip and jam their way to the album?s finish, throwing more Hammond in the mix and some record crackle and gospel sounds at the end. Psychedelonaut is a solid listen for the initiated that admittedly drags in some parts and is monumentally awesome in others. The good far outweighs the bad and anyone wanting riff after quality riff in the grand tradition of, well, riffing, could do a hell of a lot worse. Worth checking out, easily.

Wo Fat on MySpace

Brainticket Records

Tags: Brainticket, Dallas, Wo Fat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.