Review & Track Premiere: Stöner, Boogie to Baja EP
[Click play above to stream the premiere of Stöner’s ‘Night Tripper vs. No Brainer.’ Their Boogie to Baja EP is out Feb. 24 on Heavy Psych Sounds.]
Stöner make the most of their opportunity to efficiently hammer the point home. Jam. Punk. Jam. Punk. Jam. Their Boogie to Baja EP, comprised of songs recorded during the sessions for their second album, 2022’s Totally… (review here) — and like that full-length, produced by Yosef Sanborn — runs five tracks/26 minutes and follows precisely that pattern, taking the mellow roll of its beginning with “Stöner Theme (Baja Version)” and using its sub-three minutes as a setup for the back and forth to come, a short, flowing, easy nod that calls to mind some of the earlier solo work of guitarist/vocalist Brant Bjork but boasts a guest guitar solo from Fatso Jetson‘s Mario Lalli — who was also on some of that earlier work, come to think of it; it’s nice to have friends — and an almost immediate hypnotic effect that, if you’re not careful, can carry right into the subsequent kick of “City Kids.”
They hold out that last note, there’s a weirdo twang strum to end like there was at the start, and then soon the push of “City Kids” starts, with Greg Hetson of Circle Jerks sitting in with Bjork, bassist/vocalist Nick Oliveri and drummer Ryan Güt, whose collective pedigree as a three-piece has been a big part of the story to-date of Stöner, but is only actually part of it in reality as the band has come to summarize so much about what particularly Oliveri and Bjork have done in bands like Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Queens of the Stone Age, the various band incarnations of Brant Bjork, Mondo Generator, and so on; forming a kind of encompassing desert rock that, for being what it is made by who made it, remains grippingly unpretentious, holding to a dudes-in-a-room sensibility rather than trying to make some grand statement of genre or style. That is to say, as much as these guys have contributed to what desert rock has become over the last three decades, Stöner‘s mission isn’t so much to celebrate past accomplishments as find a way around them to still enjoy writing and playing music together without that baggage.
Does it work? Most of the time, yeah. Bjork, Oliveri and Güt have worked quickly over the last couple years to give the band a personality of its own, from the remember-when-we-was-punks sans-frills fuzz of their 2021 debut, Stoners Rule (review here), to the takeoff solo in “Night Tripper vs. No Brainer” here. The band’s persona, defined by the presences of Oliveri and Bjork — though I’ve said before and I’ll say again that Güt is essential personnel on drums, and he proves that again on Boogie to Baja — has begun to draw the two sides together at times, creating a more dynamic sound rather than one split along the lines of who came up with each individual part, song, etc.
“Stöner Theme (Baja Version)” is short compared to the other two jam-minded pieces here, but it serves an important function in making it a less drastic turn when “Night Tripper vs. No Brainer” picks up from “City Kids” — a cover of Pink Fairies‘ more than the 1979 Motörhead version, which pluralized the lyrics with “us” instead of “me”; the original came out in 1973 but you can hear its roots in ’60s garage rock and Stöner play into that well — with its sliding groove and plenty of space for solos to be peppered in with the bluesy call and response verses from Bjork and Oliveri, which sound spontaneous but have an underlying plot just the same, however wide around it they’re willing to work. In that way, “Stöner Theme (Baja Version)” is the key to the whole release, setting the vibe where and when vibe most matters. Without it, Boogie to Baja would feel disjointed and in competition with itself. It is the Ryan Güt of EP intros, if that helps as a way to think about it. Draws it all together, makes it groove, helps it make sense, doesn’t do too much to or too little but is in just the right spot when it needs to be. Fair enough.
Side B’s “It Ain’t Free” and “Boogie to Baja” function with a similar punch to “City Kids” and “Night Tripper vs. No Brainer,” but ups the stakes. Stripped to its distorted core, “It Ain’t Free” — which resolves in a declaration that, “Grass, gas or ass, no one rides for free” in the band — sprints in ’80s skate-punk fashion, Bjork and Oliveri barking out the verses, living to ride and riding to live, and keeping their forward momentum even as they shift into the solo-topped bridge before turning back to the verse. Maybe there’s some nostalgia there as well, but that’s well suited to the scope and purpose of the band, true to meaner sounds than some of the Ramones-y punk they’ve wrought to this point but still ultimately a fit. And at 10 minutes, “Boogie to Baja” completes the pattern with howling leads over dug-in bass and drums, locking tight at around nine seconds in and not losing its course for the duration, an exciting and improvised-sounding stretch that might not have worked on Stoners Rule but makes an almost perfect — particularly for how un-perfect it is — destination for the EP that shares its name.
Culminating with a wash of noise, fuzzy solo cutting through, the drums ever-steady within that fray, it emphasizes the human aspect of its creation, the conversation happening between players within the song, and whether one is familiar with these players’ respective backgrounds or not, the chemistry they’ve honed in this band over just the last two-plus years between touring and studio recordings is readily on display. They each seem to know where the other is and is headed, and even when “Boogie to Baja” falls apart at the finish as it inevitably must, it does so in a way that makes sense considering that at some point while the jam was being tracked they probably realized they were getting something usable out of it.
Not everybody is going to get Boogie to Baja or Stöner more generally, and if you approach it with the perspective of looking for another Kyuss or some other grand expectation based on their respective discographies, you’re missing the point. Stöner aren’t trying to reinvent desert rock. They’re trying to hang out and play, not exactly like when they were teenagers but maybe with the same kind of sense of adventure in terms of trying out ideas, taking sounds that excite them and transposing them onto their own material. I’d argue they’ve been mostly successful in this up to and through this point, but rather than the roots of each player, the most exciting part of Stöner is the whole band’s own emerging dynamic, the personality they’re defining for themselves as a group. Even in what might be called an assemblage of leftovers, they’re telling that story as it happens, and it’s a thrill to hear, even if the overarching message of the songs is “chill the fuck out and listen.” No argument.
Stöner, Boogie to Baja (2023)
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Tags: Boogie to Baja, California, Heavy Psych Sounds, Stoner, Stöner Boogie to Baja
