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Album of the Summer of the Week: Eggnogg, Moments in Vacuum

Since I started the Album of the Summer of the Week feature five weeks ago now, we’ve talked a lot about the heat, about the sunshine, about the Jersey humidity that rests itself between the ground and the sky and seems like it’s never going to leave. I’ve written more about the weather in the last month than I could’ve ever imagined I would when I started this site.

But one thing I haven’t covered yet in the AotSotW (which is the acronym by which I refer to it on my to-do list) is what to do for a summer night. Sure, there’s always Sabbath, and I highly recommend that as well, but one album that’s come to my mind several times over the last few weeks is last year’s Moments in Vacuum (review here), by Brooklyn heavy psych upstarts Eggnogg. It’s perfect for these hot-as-hell summer nights.

Let’s say, for example, you’re sitting in the yard, maybe drunk, maybe sober, and you’ve got the bug zapper going in the background. Purely hypothetical situation — not at all something that happened to me this weekend. You’ve got a couple good friends there. The temperature’s finally broke after a bout of rain, and here comes Eggnogg to round out the night perfectly with eight tracks of unrepentant lo-fi riffing, ’90s style moaning vocals and periodic bursts of all out doom. Whether it’s the odd compression in the cymbals of the 12-minute “Wheel of the Year” or the slowed-down, somehow-’80s boogie of “Raking in the Dough,” Eggnogg‘s Moments in Vacuum has so much space in the recording that it’s great for rounding out an evening on a low key but still rocking kind  of vibe. You could do a hell of a lot worse than the dual-layered solos at the end of “Cydonia” before crashing out.

Something else working in Moments in Vacuum‘s favor is that it’s long. At 74 minutes, you can put it on and know that you don’t have to worry about chasing down another disc — because, yes, while you’re sitting in the yard with the bug zapper and a nightcap and a few good friends, you play CDs in this totally hypothetical alternate universe — and even as the title-track comes to an end and you think it’s over, you’ve still got the 15:15 of “Rhythmic Past” to go. It’s got enough variety of mood that whether you’re partying or winding down, it fits, and most of all, it kicks ass. You know that’s always a plus.

Check out “Wheel of the Year” below and wait for the sun to go down:

Good news for enthusiasts of The Nogg in that they’ve got a new EP out now called Louis. More info at the Palaver Records site.

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