Boogie Van-couver trio La Chinga signed to Small Stone Records in 2013 following the release of their self-titled debut (discussed here), a blow-the-doors-down heavy rock affair that served notice from on high (or up north) that the band were a force taking shape. Their second outing, the unassumingly titled Freewheelin’, makes no attempt to fix what wasn’t broken either with that record or with the audience-friendly tenets set forth by masters Stanley and Young in ages past, but shows definitive growth in craftsmanship and the tightness of its performances.

Comprised of 10 tracks and not to be confused with the Bob Dylan album of similar name, the 44-minute Freewheelin’ gets off to a raucous start and offers little by way of letup between “Gone Gypsy” and the 10-minute closer “The Dawn of Man,” their boozy intention writ large over each motion-minded cut between as bassist/vocalist Carl Spackler, guitarist/backing vocalist Ben Yardley (also theremin, mandolin and lead vocals on “Faded Angel”) and drummer/engineer Jason Solyom build furious classic-rock-gone-modern momentum across the crisp side A salvo of “Gone Gypsy,” “Mother of all Snakeheads,” “White Witchy Black Magic” and “Stoned Grease White Lightnin’,” the latter two titles of which feel drawn from a stoner rock name randomizer, but which provide landmark choruses whose impressions resonate through the end of the record and beyond. At the start of the record, “Gone Gypsy” seems particularly to be gunning directly for latter-day Sasquatch‘s ’70s-via-’90s crown, but La Chinga expand from there even as they head into the sprint of “Mother of all Snakeheads,” the start and central shuffle of which could just as easily have been born out of a Radio Moscow jam.

It’s a potent blend of elements, and as much as the focus of Freewheelin’ is everybody-get-down-and-have-a-good-time, the album does have a front-to-back flow and stylistic depth to that course. The party is in full run as the hooks of “White Witchy Black Magic” and “Stoned Grease White Lightnin'” take hold, but with the turn to the Yardley-led “Faded Angel,” which trades back and forth between acoustic and electrified stretches, La Chinga signal not just a slowdown, but a general spreading out of their aesthetic basis. The subsequent “Mountain Momma” is livelier but still centered around an unplugged arrangement, Spackler‘s best Robert Plant holding sway over a momentum drawn down only to be rebuilt again. With the way the songs are positioned and the fade-in of “War Cry,” I’m assuming that’s where the vinyl split is, but don’t quote me on that.

Either way, the track maintains the backing vocals from “Mountain Momma” but revives the stomp and push of the earlier material, the kicked-in-the-ass AC/DC vibe surging to the fore atop Solyom‘s punctuating snare as La Chinga get down to business once again. The scope will broaden furthest on “The Dawn of Man” still to come, but “K.I.W.” introduces a more mid-paced boozy roll, boasts yet another scorching solo from Yardley, and rides out on a long fade following some awaited cowbell. That leaves “Right On” to ground the audience one more time in a killer hook before the closer takes off into the stratosphere, and it’s a task to which the penultimate track is well suited, a crowdpleaser of spilled beer and banged head, it reaffirms the rock-for-rockers ethic at the core of the record as a whole and neatly summarizes a major portion of the album’s appeal in the three-piece’s efficient, sing-along-ready modus.

La Chinga‘s debut showed some nascent psychedelic influences, but nothing quite so firmly entrenched as “The Dawn of Man,” which sets itself apart immediately from the rest of the album preceding in a subdued, patient introduction that builds to its full thrust over the first two minutes before unfurling the first verse and carries a semi-lysergic feel through a layered chorus, extended solo section, return of the verse/chorus and long, trippy march outward into the record’s end. Obviously, “The Dawn of Man” isn’t without its underlying structure — that’s what all that verse/chorus stuff is about — but what sets it apart is what La Chinga do with that structure, and “The Dawn of Man” is a bolder push into space than anything else they’ve done to this point or anything else presented on Freewheelin’.

That’s the point. It’s intended to stand out, intended to end the record on a switched-up note from what came before, and through it, La Chinga signal to anyone who hasn’t yet passed out that they haven’t yet reached the be-all-end-all of their songwriting progression. Because they not only make this turn at the end of their second outing and Small Stone debut, but because they pull it off successfully, it’s easy to imagine the band continuing to progress from here, but the consideration of what the might do in the future shouldn’t come at the expense of appreciating what Freewheelin’ has to offer, its fine-pointed, energetic shove a reminder that the whole point of rock and roll in the first place was to make you move. So move.

La Chinga on Thee Facebooks

Freewheelin’ preorder from Small Stone Records

Tags: British Columbia, Canada, Freewheelin', La Chinga, La Chinga Freewheelin', Small Stone Records, Vancouver

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2016 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.