Album Review: Yawning Balch, Volume One
It takes maybe 20 seconds for “Dreaming With Eyes Open” to fade in completely, and by then, the jam is fully dug in. Volume One, released through Heavy Psych Sounds, is the first offering from the unit billed as Yawning Balch, which is comprised of the current lineup of Yawning Man — founding guitarist Gary Arce, as well as bassist Billy Cordell and drummer Bill Stinson — plus guitarist Bob Balch, also known for his work in Fu Manchu, Sun and Sail Club, Minotaur, the ‘PlayThisRiff’ series of instructional guitar videos, and so on. Most relevant to this three-song/42-minute offering, though, is Big Scenic Nowhere, which is the first incarnation of the Arce/Balch collab, that outfit bringing together two of heavy rock’s signature guitarists along with Stinson, Mos Generator‘s Tony Reed, and others, with jamming at their root and songs carved from different pieces of recorded improvisations and parts fit together after the fact to give structure to the material.
And therein lies the difference. While Yawning Balch‘s Volume One — which begins with “Dreaming With Eyes Open” at 21:36 as the longest track/opener (immediate points) before moving into “Cemetery Glitter” (13:52) and “Low Pressure Valley” (7:29) on side B — features some editing, as hinted at by that first fade in, and also the outbound one at the end of the lead piece, the fadeout of “Cemetery Glitter” and the way “Low Pressure Valley” rises from silence to ride off into its own sunset, it is definitively a jam-based release. Recorded by Dan Joeright at Gatos Trail — who helmed the ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ stream series in 2020/2021 and the Yawning Man album, Long Walk of the Navajo (review here), that Heavy Psych Sounds issued last month — and mixed and mastered by Wo Fat‘s Kent Stump at Crystal Clear Sound in Texas, it harnesses the explorations on which Big Scenic Nowhere material might be based, but shifts intention in documenting those jams as they happened, at least in part. It is the same collaboration in a rawer form.
In Yawning Balch, as in Big Scenic Nowhere, the two guitarists are extraordinarily well suited to each other’s styles. Arce has been jamming in the Californian desert for the better part of the last 40 years, and his playing is open and vibrant with his trademark shimmering melancholia of tone. Balch leans more toward verse/chorus structure in most of his work, but seems in “Dreaming With Eyes Open” to be reveling in the chance to let loose that playing alongside Arce represents. Employing sundry flanges, synth generators, backwards looping, on and on, the first of the three inclusions on Volume One feels broad and spacious because it is, and its 21 minutes are a journey to be undertaken through conscious and tapped-unconscious creativity, Cordell and Stinson holding down fluid movement to help cast the shape of each part before the next arrives.
Lush throughout, with presumably Balch‘s otherworldly swirl turning to a crunchier distortion at 19:31, following and setting a rhythm before taking off on the next solo as it all starts to come down, “Dreaming With Eyes Open” is its own landscape to inhabit. A place to dwell. And it is accordingly emblematic of the thought behind the presentation of the album that “Cemetery Glitter” starts in more immediate fashion; the crash-and-go hits like walking into a room and finding the show already started. For all I know it was recorded five minutes after “Dreaming With Eyes Open,” or before it, but with more forward kick drum and outward reaching tendrils of guitar, a comfortable bassline for the listener to rest on while the light morphs into various shapes above, and some more actively jazzy noodling in its middle, “Cemetery Glitter” has its own persona, distinct from the side-A-consuming piece before it and the shorter capper that follows.
“Low Pressure Valley” keys in on resonance early and resides there for the duration. In the background of the mix, one guitar plays through a largely steady flow of echoing notes while the more forward guitar tops with a bluesy solo, figuring out its way as it goes across the first few minutes after the intro pickup. The closer is serene, even compared to “Dreaming With Eyes Open” or “Cemetery Glitter,” and lives in its groove for what feels like a quick seven minutes in context. That’s long enough, however, to leave an impression once again distinguished from its surroundings, and to let Yawning Balch display the chemistry between the two guitarists and the complementary manner in which they interact. They end on a long-held residual echo, fading it up and out quickly at the finish of “Low Pressure Valley,” like maybe your ears just popped and the music wasn’t real after all.
When the project was announced, Balch described the session: “In November of 2022 I went out to Joshua Tree for a day of jamming with the guys in Yawning Man with the intention of calling it Yawning Balch. No riffs were planned. We just plugged in and played. The only discussion beforehand was that Gary Arce and I wanted to mess with tons of guitar pedals. I knew that while we were jamming it sounded great, but it wasn’t until I got home and listened to it all that I realized we had something special…” That session would end up yielding two full-lengths, with Volume One as the first. And they definitely accomplish that ‘mess with tons of guitar pedals’ part here, basking in the spur-of-the-moment flourish that the sundry effects provide with patience and a largely serene mood as the result.
As to what might be in store for Volume Two (due out I don’t know when), there’s no real mystery. It’s more jams from the same session. Yawning Balch don’t need to be cagey about what they’re doing. They’re jamming. Whether this will be an ongoing band apart from Yawning Man and Arce and Balch‘s others, it’s hard to know and I wouldn’t hazard a guess even before you get to the logistics of trying to schedule getting together around tours and whatnot. Given that, it seems all the more fortunate that (1:) these jams were recorded at all, because sessions like this aren’t always put to tape, and (2:) there’s more coming. But whether one knows Yawning Man, or Fu Manchu, or Big Scenic Nowhere or any of the other acts in these players’ respective orbits, Yawning Balch offers a new and in some ways deeper view of its core collaboration.
Yawning Balch, Volume One (2023)
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Tags: California, Heavy Psych Sounds, Joshua Tree, Volume One, Yawning Balch, Yawning Balch Volume One
