Friday Full-Length: Yawning Man, Live at Giant Rock
Of all of Yawning Man‘s releases — which go back the better part of 40 years if you count the demo collection The Birth of Sol (discussed here) — I’m not sure I’ve ever heard their tones sound as warm as they do on Live at Giant Rock (interview here). That’s true of Gary Arce‘s guitar as it floats in signature style over Mario Lalli‘s bass in near-15-minute set opener “Tumbleweeds in the Snow,” and it might even be truer of the bass than the guitar, but it extends to Bill Stinson‘s drums as well. It’s like they recorded the sunshine they were playing in, and even if you’ve never seen the video of Arce, Lalli and Stinson jamming in the Mojave Desert at… wait for it… Giant Rock, the audio experience is as immersive as any of their work on ‘not live’ studio LPs.
It’s like the Platonic ideal of Yawning Man. It maintains a heavy underpinning in Lalli‘s bass and is ultra-fluid in its instrumentalist groove, searching and if not improvised then working more from a blueprint than a strict sense of structure. The CD edition of Live at Giant Rock runs 47 minutes — the video and download are five minutes longer, the vinyl shorter without the bonus track “Space Finger” — but there’s really no wrong answer when it comes to hearing it. “The Last Summer Eve” howls out its guitar over a steady, terrestrial roll, guitar and bass each moving their own way but complementary, not playing two separate songs but not playing the same thing the same way either and both feature in the mix while the drums round out and punctuate. Recorded by Johnathan Weber with a mix by Mathias Schneeberger, there’s more dimension to Live at Giant Rock than most live albums. If they had released it as ‘Giant Rock Session’ or just called it ‘Giant Rock’ and pitched it as a regular old full-length, I’m not sure I’d be able to argue. It blurs that line in sound, which isn’t really anything new for Yawning Man, I suppose.
The recording was filmed on May 18, 2020, by Sam Grant and released that October through Heavy Psych Sounds, and its poignancy as a document of a time when live music culture was swept out from under the feet of the audience and artists alike isn’t to be lost, and certainly “Nazi Synthesizer” as a wordplay is maybe even more relevant now than it was shortly before the 2020 US presidential election — though it was definitely relevant then as well, what with all those fascists around; the difference is now they’re in Congress — and while I’m pretty sure there’s no actual synth on it, just effects, the song’s balance between more intense moments of wash and atmospheric spaciousness is emblematic of exactly how Yawning Man helped found the style of desert rock. Add 
punk to “Nazi Synthesizer” and you pretty much have it.
But although Live at Giant Rock was made and issued as a result of the fact that live shows couldn’t happen, serving also as a precursor for the streaming series Live in the Mojave Desert, which featured Earthless, Nebula, Stöner, Spirit Mother and Mountain Tamer, its resonance goes beyond that, and while I won’t discount the plague or the generational trauma it caused and continues to cause on humanity in general though on a lesser scale and definitely less present in the news cycle, what Yawning Man accomplish here is outside of time. Just past its midsection, “Blowhole Sunrise” seems to grow even broader in Arce‘s guitar. Stinson and Lalli are right there, the structure, a foundation, and then the drums drop out for a moment and the guitar seems to fly away, its ringing lines like the waves that would turn the Cali desert into the seabed it once was. It’s hypnotic, but the real trick is that it never quite stops moving as much as it seems to, and even as one measure is echoing out, the next is happening, so that Yawning Man always feel like they’re a little ahead of you, which, well, also nothing new. Fair enough.
And of course the band’s tie to the desert, to the legacy of generator parties out in the wild or at some abandoned skatepark, whatever it was, is a presence here. That context is useful to appreciate what they’re doing, I guess, but if you didn’t have it, I’m not sure it would do anything to detract from the languid motion of “Space Finger,” the way the bass goes down and the guitar goes up and the drums hold the two together — the essential dynamic of Yawning Man‘s style and the very balance they most toy with throughout Live at Giant Rock — or the fact that this is a band playing at their best in a rare situation and setting. Like all of the live records that came out when shows weren’t happening — and there was a pointed, delightfully contradictory abundance of them — it’s pandemic-era in terms of timeline, but there’s so much more to it as a piece and declaration of who Yawning Man are as a band, the impact and influence they’ve had and continue to have on the shape of a genre in which they only ever partially reside. “Space Finger” hums to an unpretentious finish and is gone like the moment itself. Even good shows end.
Yawning Man reportedly have a new record in the works to follow 2019’s Macedonian Lines (review here), and in the meantime, Lalli has been out with Mario Lalli and the Rubber Snake Charmers touring far and wide, and Arce has been collaborating with Bob Balch of Fu Manchu and others in Big Scenic Nowhere and the forthcoming Yawning Balch, so there’s never really any lack of activity even if Yawning Man aren’t always in full-time all the time, go-go-go momentum. Wouldn’t really suit them if they were, anyway. They are and remain a treasure held by desert rock itself maybe too much an underground secret, but all the more valued for that by those who appreciate them. I’ll put Live at Giant Rock up there with their best work, gladly. It’s in good company.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Kid coming downstairs as I typed that last sentence above. That’s a 5:45AM wakeup. I got up at 4, as usual. Tomorrow I might sleep late, which means I’d get up whenever he does.
I know everyone is tight on money, but if you bought any of the new Obelisk merch this week, thank you. That support goes a long way. It’s linked below and is at: http://mibk.bigcartel.com/products
While I’m plugging and dropping links: New episode of The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs at 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com. I’d recommend the app, but however you get there, thanks if you do.
Kind of a blur of a week, but the writing was easy enough. I’m behind on news stuff already for Monday and have more to do for today as I write this, but so it goes. At some point this morning — or what I hope will be this morning — Hippie Death Cult will announce their next tour with their new drummer who they announced yesterday. In the meantime, I have other stuff waiting to go up.
Later now. Went swimming, showered, had a egg-on-chaffles sandwich. The primary update here is much the same as last week. Broke, overwhelmed. I know I’m not alone in that. It’s everybody who isn’t already super-rich. And kind of amazing that how isolated we all are and have been since the plague — it occurred to me that I used to just go out and do stuff sometimes — actually serves the purposes of the people who are ripping us off on everything. If everyone is at home staring at their phone, no one is in the streets demanding debt relief or subsidies to get by, or god forbid, that the artificially inflated costs of living and basic necessities are actually brought down. Why is it that prices only ever go up?
So yeah, thanks for buying merch.
Have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate. Stay warm or cool depending on your geography and preference. I’ll be back on Monday with that review no one’s gonna give a crap about and a bunch more.
FRM.
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Tags: California, Heavy Psych Sounds, Live at Giant Rock, Palm Springs, Yawning Man, Yawning Man Live at Giant Rock
I give a crap. This is what keeps me moving forward everyday. Broke and overwhelmed as duck. But so be it. We have a cool
Soundtrack. Glad this is here.