Album Review: Nebula, Transmission From Mothership Earth
Don’t tell anybody, but I think Nebula might be on… the drugs. All of them, to be precise.
At least three tracks out of the total eight on the band’s seventh album, Transmission From Mothership Earth, essentially about getting and being very, very high, beginning with opener “Highwired,” the chorus of which runs, “Stay high/Never die/Highwired/Stay high.” First, I’m not sure that, medically speaking, it’s true that if you stay high all the time you’re immortal, but I’m no doctor and Nebula have been at this a while so I won’t argue. Still, between “Highwired,” “Wilted Flowers” and the dead-giveaway “I Got So High,” the point gets across. Nebula‘s second post-reunion full-length is self-recorded self-oblivion, the rawest they’ve ever sounded in some ways and the most expansive in others — looking at you, “Melt Your Head” — a gritty reboot for stoner rock cast in their own addled image.
Signature components are present and accounted for in the 38-minute Transmission, including Eddie Glass‘ shredder soloing and anti-lucidity vocal drawl, riffs born of garage rock, space rock, or just outright punk grown their hair out and stopped bathing and decided to live outside for a while. There is an underlying meticulousness here, of course, and the thing you need to know is that Nebula — Glass, bassist/vocalist Tom Davies and desert rock’s house drummer Mike Amster (also of Mondo Generator, ex-Blaak Heat Shujaa, Abrams, etc.) — are masters of making depth sound easy and lackadaisical. Part of that comes from Glass‘ vocal style, which conveys classic SoCal slacker slouch fuckall, and part of it is tonality, which allows both Glass and Davies to draw the listener in with hypnotic effects swirls over rhythm tracks and, as on the seven-minute side B leadoff “Warzone Speedwolf,” to lace their jams with enough chemical lysergics to make the entire world forget its trauma. Nebula for world peace? You couldn’t possibly tell me it would be the strangest thing that ever happened.
But the point, somewhat obscured by the haze, the shoulder-shove, the melting of heads and whatnot, is that even if a track like the full-on freakout “Melt Your Head” sounds like they’re just throwing whatever onto the recording, that’s a purposeful decision Nebula are making. And 25 years on from the band’s founding, they’re able to create an atmosphere of smoke swirling around the room while still casting a memorable impression underneath. “Transmission From Mothership Earth” follows the opener and toys with fuzz and surf and grunge and is all the swagger you could ask after 2019’s Holy Shit (review here), and “Wilted Flowers” takes Stooges and MC5 attitude through a meat grinder of ranging, foggy acid fluidity, giving classic Monster Magnet a run for its money in hook and buzzing space triumph. And the aforementioned hook of “Highwired,” by the way, is not only emblematic of the ethos of the album as a whole, but a standout for its catchiness that earns its place up front.
Likewise, “Warzone Speedwolf” follows “Melt Your Head” with a headphone-ready expansion of intent that signals further shifts ahead on side B, but it almost feels like a formality given the mastery with which Nebula deliver their material and the in-their-element nature of their work throughout this record. And the chaos in “Melt Your Head” feels genuine, pushed forward through “Warzone Speedwolf” and into the more straightforward “I Got So High” — “I went to the doctor/To see what he could give to me…” telling the tale of pill popping en route to the chorus of the repeated line, “I got so high tonight,” delivered by Davies as he steps into the lead vocal role backed by Glass. That turn is unexpected and another showcase both of the trio doing whatever the hell they want and of their making it work with the record surrounding. “I Got So High” is almost tragically catchy, and its sub-five minutes still allow for plenty of all-go layered soloing in the second half, channels going this way and that until the space clears and they turn back to the chorus in traditional fashion before “Existential Blues” starts out with its bassline and buzz and effects, slower rolling, languid, drugged, clawing at the last strains of consciousness.
It is a blues song, to be sure, and the more you’re able to listen through the crust, the more you’ll hear it. Davies‘ bassline and Amster‘s drumming hold together a steady flow as Glass‘ guitar runs forward and backward all at once, creating a wash of fuzz and a sense of going everywhere at the same time that trips out the earthy groove beneath. As with the whole of Transmission From Mothership Earth, one shouldn’t fail to consider the artistry at work. There’s so much inwardly directed obliteration happening throughout this record, and plenty still to come on the purposefully-flaunting-grammar “The Four Horseman” — which references Morricone Spaghetti Westernism and Jefferson Airplane‘s “Somebody to Love,” because of course — but like the trumpet or trumpet sounds on the finale, like the detail of the mix on “Existential Blues” or “Melt Your Head” or “Wilted Flowers,” like the hooks, like the solos, like the sometimes urgent sometimes laid back groove throughout, this is who Nebula are.
The start of this review was a joke, because a lot of this record is about doing drugs, and it sounds like it. But to confuse art and artist(s) here is to dehumanize Nebula as players and songwriters, and it takes away from the actual accomplishment of Transmission From Mothership Earth, which is to push the group to places that even in their storied and widely influential career — one could easily argue that their label, Heavy Psych Sounds, which is the foremost purveyor of underground heavy in the world, wouldn’t exist without their influence on its founder, at least not in the shape it exists now — they haven’t been before. I do not know what Nebula‘s future holds, and anybody in the trio is doing more drugs than they want to be, I sincerely hope they get help if they need it. It’s easy to forget there are people behind these songs, because they’re otherworldly and there’s so much happening in them, and something they do very well is portray the escape-from-identity that a controlled substance might provide, if temporarily. But this is more than a drug album, and Nebula are more than drug band. A quarter-century after their start, they’re discovering new modes of expression, and the filthy revelry they conjure here suits them.
Nebula, Transmission From Mothership Earth (2022)
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