Album Review: Charley No Face, Eleven Thousand Volts
Portland, Oregon’s Charley No Face — named for a Pennsylvanian urban legend about someone who was not actually called Charley — made a well regarded debut with 2020’s The Green Man (discussed here), issued first as a three-song EP and subsequently a full-length with the backing of Forbidden Place Records. The four-piece have undergone some reconstruction in the time since, with guitarist/vocalist Nick Wulforst, bassist Brad Larson and drummer Tim Abel parting ways with guitarist/vocalist Stephen Cameron and bringing aboard keyboardist/vocalist Carina Hartley, whose contributions are an immediate boon to second album, Eleven Thousand Volts, feeding into and expanding on the lush melodies of the previous LP so that the sound grows more expansive even as the songwriting feels tighter. From opening cut “Eyes” through the immersive closing pair of “Satan’s Hands” and “Death Mask,” this incarnation of Charley No Face — as well as producer Cameron Spies at Trash Treasury Studios and Mike Nolte, who mastered — unite subtly varied songs through an abiding psychedelic warmth, pulling the listener deeper into the resultant atmosphere as the seven-song/41-minute procession unfurls.
This journey, which leaves a path behind it laden with fuzz overgrown like so much moss in the woods, is all the more satisfying for the manner in which the tracks work together to create the overarching impression of the whole. That is to say, it’s a high level of craft being engaged, and “Eyes” quickly establishes a depth of arrangement that that is effectively toyed with throughout, Wulforst and Hartley‘s voices languidly chanting together in a way that reminds of Quest for Fire in the early going of second cut “Mosaic Sky” and the later “Big Sleep” (that is not a compliment I hand out lightly), seems to be working directly off Witch‘s “Seer” in the central riff for “Melted Sun” — something that Abel‘s drums readily acknowledge in the transitional snare pops — and finally shifting into a post-Sabbath-and-grunge heavy cultism by the time “Death Mask” hits, outwardly serene at the start, but using the darker thematic current to add context to Eleven Thousand Volts‘ final payoff, itself hinted at in the swaggering solo that ends “Mosaic Sky” as well as the lurching, willfully repetitive final hook of “Satan’s Hands” prior.
Swing abounds, and Wulforst‘s guitar and Larson‘s bass bring together tones of marked richness that, in dynamic fashion, work together with Hartley‘s keys so that “Flat Circle” can move from its tense initial push — a cowbell from Abel in the chorus tap-tap-tapping as though to tell the audience’s attention to snap to because something cool is happening — into its spacier final minute and a half, the keyboard not quite touching on sci-fi or a sense of the otherworldly, but taking the forward position just the same and deepening the vibe in a way that would be distinctly absent were it not there. “Mosaic Sky,” as well as being particularly memorable in the shimmer of its harmonies against a quieter backdrop post-midpoint, is the first of three longer, seven-to-eight-minute inclusions on Eleven Thousand Volts, and comes across as though it was placed just after “Eyes” to give a hint at what follows later in “Satan’s Hands” and “Death Mask.” The three songs together are the only ones over five minutes long, so are all the more differentiated from the surrounding four pieces, “Eyes,” “Flat Circle,” “Melted Sun” and “Big Sleep,” the last of which drawls to an especially righteous finish, a stretch of residual feedback — not overly harsh — and a final tape-wind and crash serving as the transition from which the acoustic guitar at the outset of “Satan’s Hands” picks up.
Eleven Thousand Volts is full of these little-seeming moments of gorgeous or otherwise appreciable nuance. The cowbell in “Flat Circle.” The dream-echo on the vocals as they repeat the title line of “Eyes.” The more weighted chug that underscores the solo in the back half of that song. The layers building up in the midsection of “Melted Sun” and the way everything but the vocals drops out to finish with the lines “Planetary forces upon us” at what I’ll assume is the ending of side A before the keyboard hum and drone of “Big Sleep” begins side B. The edge of classic metal drama brought into “Death Mask,” Hartley‘s keys and Wulforst‘s guitar bringing the closer to a rousing conclusion after the Snail-esque forward vocal melody in the song’s previous verses. And as many of these moments as there are, they stand out even more for occurring in outright service to the tracks and to the album in its entirety. Everything Charley No Face do on Eleven Thousand Volts, indulgent as some of it may seem on at first glance, is geared toward making the songs and the record more complete. One of their greater accomplishments throughout is that the end product doesn’t sound overblown or staid.
It’s worth saying, then, that while it may turn out ultimately to very much be a transitional outing for Charley No Face in terms of lineup and the chemistry that will hopefully continue to develop therebetween, Eleven Thousand Volts is not at all to be discounted for the progression of songwriting throughout or the clarity of purpose that comes through its ultra-hazy tones. Short songs or longer, it doesn’t matter. “Satan’s Hands” is no less catchy than “Flat Circle,” and both are clearly intended to do more than function as earworms. Like the entirety of Eleven Thousand Volts, those tracks create a world that perhaps doesn’t get enough credit for color in the nonetheless striking cover art, appropriately grainy and stark as it is. This atmosphere, as noted above, is what draws the audience closer to the material and puts them in step with the groove even as they might seem to float with each ensuing verse and/or chorus. It is easy to get lost in, but of a significant quality worth both regular revisits and conscious attention in the moment. Serenity in and through doom.
Charley No Face, Eleven Thousand Volts (2022)
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