The Dead-End Alley Band, Whispers of the Night: Finding the Reaches

Posted in Reviews on December 4th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

With heavy nods along the way to Pink Floyd, early Alice Cooper and The Beatles, young Peruvian psychedelic rockers The Dead-End Alley Band conjure a classic moodiness throughout their full-length debut, Whispers of the Night, beginning with the immediately meditative vibing of opener “Mirrors and Seagulls.” More or less an introduction, the song still manages to set up a good deal of the spirit of the Lima-based act’s first outing, released on CD by Ice Label Records in Peru with vinyl through Nasoni. A spare, peaceful guitar sets out in minimalist exploration, slow, patient, but still moving, and toward the very end, a brief spoken word takes hold to smooth the transition into the rest of the 52-minute album, which is engaging and varied in approach but consistent in overall mood and the feel that the group’s core duo of guitarist/bassist/vocalist Javier Kou and vocalist/key-specialist (organ, piano, synth, etc.) Sebastian Sanchez-Botta are able to elicit throughout the total 10 tracks.

Structurally, the material is pretty straightforward, but there’s a wandering sensibility all the same, and in the compression of the bass tone and snare drum (it sounds like a real drummer, but might be programmed), the textures of the organ and synth, the layering of the vocals, The Dead-End Alley Band immediately conjure a ’70s LP vibe. Fifty-two minutes is long for that kind of feel — usually one encounters a more vinyl-ready 35-45 minutes — but they make the time work well, adding Eastern flair to “Lizards and Snakes” in following the traditional psych-folk of the title-track, into which “Mirrors and Seagulls” almost directly bleeds. Tradeoffs between the two singers in the lead role adds to the diversity as “Lizards and Snakes” gives way to the organ-and-bass-led creepiness of “Centuries,” which includes a somewhat surprising mash of news samples that, perhaps contrary to the band’s mission of psychedelic traditionalism, pull the listener into a more modern sphere with references to Japan’s Fukushima disaster and Today Show host Matt Lauer. The results are sonically fluid, but somewhat incongruous in theory, the late ’60s Floydian modus crashing into modern realities. Maybe that blend is what brought about the title “Centuries” in the first place, but it’s striking either way.

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