Stream Review: Stöner, ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’
And just like that, the ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ stream series comes to its apparent conclusion, with the reveal of Stöner, a new project that brings together guitarist/vocalist Brant Bjork, bassist/vocalist Nick Oliveri and drummer Ryan Gut. There was no interview in the preceding ‘Couchlock and Rock’ segment, but clips of prior editions from Earthless (review here), Mountain Tamer (review here), Nebula (review here) and Spirit Mother (review here) came across with plugs for impending live-album vinyls and videos followed presumably out of the TubeVision archive of Brant Bjork and the Bros. from 2004 and Oliveri‘s long-running outfit Mondo Generator — which in the shown 2003 incarnation had Bjork on drums and Oliveri‘s fellow Queens of the Stone Age alum Dave Catching on guitar. Not too shabby.
However, the main event was, of course, the main event. Duly dramatic footage of Oliveri, Bjork and Gut walking up to the spot led in, and a quick glance at some lyrics in with the setlist on a clipboard offered a subtle reminder of just how new this outfit is. Over the next 40-plus minutes of playing, Stöner established a feel that was at once familiar and fresh. In our interview last week, Bjork spoke about how the central idea of the project was to strip away any sense of expectation or idea of what it should be, just to go back to the roots of where they started and have fun playing together. Fair enough.
Stöner set about delivering on that promise quickly. Their opener, “Rad Stays Rad” — with its hook of “Shit don’t change/Rad stays rad” — might as well be their mission statement, and if they don’t call their eventual studio LP The Birth of Rad, I’ll be a little bummed out. The first lines of the song are a Ramones reference and they’re set to a riff that wouldn’t at all have been out of place coming from Blues for the Red Sun era Kyuss. Locked in that they-made-it-look-simple but still urgent groove, and as much as the songs were new, the parts that made them up were about classic as desert rock gets. That “Rad Stays Rad” was presented in a kind of high-contrast sepia only enhanced that feel.
Room for jams? Oh, most certainly. “Rad Stays Rad” stretched out a bit with Bjork‘s solo section and thereby revealed a little more of Stöner‘s dynamic at this early stage. Oliveri and Bjork go way back, to before Kyuss was Kyuss. Let’s call it 35 years, give or take. And Gut is the drummer in Bjork‘s solo band, so they’re plenty familiar with each other from touring together as well. So the new creative relationship in the trio is between Oliveri and Gut, and there were moments in the set — not so much “Rad Stays Rad” or the similarly riffed and well-hooked “The Older Kids,” but later on — where both would watch Bjork for the lead. There wasn’t a stumble from what I could tell watching/listening, and they were as tight as they wanted to be, it was just something you could see a couple times that subtly tipping off the fact that this band hasn’t toured yet. Blah blah circumstances blah blah.
Oliveri took lead vocals for “Evel Never Dies,” a punkier shout with the delivery he’s settled into that’s not quite a scream but not quite sung either. Like “Rad Stays Rad” and “The Older Kids,” there was a sense of nostalgia to the theme, the title of course nodding both at “evil” never dying and daredevil Evel Knievel. Gut took the change in purpose and forward momentum in stride — he’s the secret weapon here; even a change in how hard he hits the snare does much to affect the vibe of a given song — and Stöner slid easily into the more propulsive cut, the sun setting around them casting shadows from the joshua trees.
They returned to the mid-tempo push with the shorter-seeming “Nothin'” and the sky turned duly purple for that and the subsequent “Own Yer Blues,” slower, more languid in the laid-back-heavy tradition of Bjork‘s solo work, but with a chorus worthy of being the first impression the band made (and it was; a video premiered for it ahead of the stream that you can see below). The chorus, “By afternoon you own yer blues,” took a similar perspective as “Rad Stays Rad” and “The Older Kids”; a mature voice speaking from a place of experience, sort of looking back but not in a way that’s trying to retro-fy or capture something lost. Some more guttural delivery from Bjork at the end of the track underscored the point, and though sometimes watching Oliveri play a mellower song is like waiting for a cannon to go off, he nailed it. Dude’s reputation precedes him — blah blah shotgun standoff blah blah Cocaine Rodeo — but he’s the guy for the job, no question.
“Stand Down” and “Tribe/Flygirl” followed. Nighttime. Drones buzzing around dark rocks, dark yellow light. Too cool. You got your dose of funk in “Stand Down” to pick up the tempo from “Own Yer Blues” and “Tribe/Flygirl” brought the Stöner jam in fashion that earned the umlaut. Call it mood, or vibe, or whatever you want, but you’d be lucky to get those three in order on side B to close out the record as they happened in the set — well, I guess they will on the live album. In any case, it was right there in those three later pieces that Bjork, Oliveri and Gut seemed most locked in. They’d got through the rock, through the punk and into the headier, stonier fare, and it showed how far out they’re ready to go, even as a brand new band. By the time they brought it down and Oliveri hit the last bass rumble to cap the performance, there was little else to say but “fucking right on.” Coming from anyone else, you would say Stöner just sounds like someone pretending they’re these guys. Coming from them, you can only call it honest.
This was ‘Vol. 4’ of ‘Live in the Mojave Desert,’ despite airing after ‘Vol. 5,’ which featured Mountain Tamer. With continued producing/directing by project-creator Ryan Jones, filming by Spearhead Media, audio by Dan Joeright at Gatos Trail Recording Studio in Joshua Tree and a mix/master by Matt Lynch (also of Snail) at Mysterious Mammal in L.A., it was a duly rousing finish. An ongoing business dispute between Jones and Bjork gave the viewing a bittersweet edge, but there was no denying that in this showcase as well as in the other ‘episodes,’ they found their Pompeii out in the desert. Whatever happens with the world outside, with tours being booked again and venues maybe surviving the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’d be lucky to get ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ season two. Until then, we own our blues.
Stöner, “Own Yer Blues” from ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’
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