Friday Full-Length: Charley No Face, The Green Man
Posted in Bootleg Theater on April 22nd, 2022 by JJ KoczanI said the other day I was going to do a little unofficial series about records that came out in 2020 that I didn’t get to cover for various reasons — be it lack of time, lack of brainpower, distraction by the looming specter of imminent viral death, or whathaveyou — and that begins here, with the debut full-length from Portland, Oregon’s Charley No Face. Following hot on the release of their early 2020 debut EP, The Green Man, the full-length — wait for it… — The Green Man first arrived in April, on the 10th according to Bandcamp. Forbidden Place Records had a version out with its backing by July and a vinyl release followed in December.
The four-piece at the time were comprised of guitarist/vocalist Nick Wulforst, guitarist/vocalist Stephen Cameron, bassist Brad Larson and drummer Tim Abel, and from the EP, they carried over the duly shimmering melodies of “Prism,” the Quest for Fire-ish dream-drift-into-melodic-wash of “Gatekeeper” and “Endless Dream,” which earns its place as the centerpiece of the album’s nine-song tracklist with its second half’s gone-for-a-walk fuzz-drenched swing ‘n’ strut. Around these they pepper a collection of songs totally 45 minutes that only makes me think they had even more than that composed when they entered the studio.
Why? Because at 45 minutes, The Green Man feels spare. Perhaps not the 40-second backwards-guitar whathaveyou of the intro “Bring Me the Heads of the Kings: Parts I-IV,” about which I thought long and hard about doing an in-depth examination with each 10-second interval as another of the four component “parts” of the obviously tongue-in-cheek whole, but no one but me would get the joke and that gets to be kind of sad after a while. But still, that 40 seconds at the outset notwithstanding, you wouldn’t call the bulk of the material urgent so much as patient in its delivery — the open verses of “Red Room,” which follows the intro, and the casual noodling solo work at the end of “Gatekeeper” send that message early, and it’s not long in being affirmed by the mellow vibes in much of the rest — but if you were sitting at Trash Treasury in Portland where the album was made with producer Cameron Spies and you were in Charley No Face working on the final incarnation of the album, I’m not sure what song you’d drop At 45 minutes, The Green Man is maybe six or seven minutes longer than one would expect a modern LP of its heavy psychedelic stripe to be, but every piece here earns its place, and whether it’s the languid march of “Prism” or the turn-to-proto-doom-riffing in “Endless Dream” there isn’t one of these tracks you could lose and make the record stronger. It is what it needs to be.
In large part, that’s serene. By no means are Charley No Face‘s songs lazy, but they do a good job of making you want to be. The mix is vast enough to let Wulforst‘s vocals stand out with the Pacific-Northwest-enough-to-remind-me-of-Snail melody on “Red Room” and still able to deliver the punker-rooted message of the later “Wasted Youth” without any trouble, that sudden burst of speed leading the way into the back end of the tracklisting — side B, as it were – with the ultra-Witch-y riff of
“Weight of the Sun” offering primo nod at cut rate discounts while “Yellow Belly” lysergically reminds us we’re all complicit while the mood calls back to “Gatekeeper” but establishes its own righteous chorus swell and delivers on its payoff every time, and the eight-minute closer “Master of Light” creeps at the outset and morphs into post-Uncle Acid harmony-topped garage boogie, jams out over that central rhythm and circles back to the hook like it ain’t even a thing to finish before dedicating the better part of its last minute to residual noise. All of these are united in purpose with the first half of The Green Man by the consistency of mood, tone and melody. Charley No Face veer into and out of conversation with traditional psychedelia, heavy rock, ’70s-vintageism, indie chic and doomly march, but they bring everything — even the Ramones on “Wasted Youth” — under their own particular sonic umbrella like running it through a haze filter set to reverse.
As James Carville once definitely did not say, “It’s the fuzz, stupid.” Charley No Face have it in droves here, and it’s the warmth of their tones that make the most striking first impression, with the vocal melodies not far behind. Coupled as those are largely by the laid back, grooving drums — the occasional breakout or punk track aside, though “Wasted Youth” hits into a massive slowdown following the last drawn-out intonation of its title line and crawls all the way back into grungegaze wash until its last wobbles fade out — the material gives a cohesive and engaging, welcoming spirit. This and the flow of one song into another — those wobbles giving way to the clarion opening guitar figure of “Weight of the Sun,” for example — show a clarity of vision and purpose on the part of the band. If I was writing about this as a debut album that just came down the wire and was about to hit, I’d be going on and on about the potential here and how much I hoped the band would be able to maintain the warmth of The Green Man and the quality of their songcraft while continuing to move forward as songwriters.
But that already happened. In February of this year, Charley No Face released their second album, Eleven Thousand Volts (review here), working again with Cameron Spies (and Mike Nolte, who mastered) and bringing in keyboardist/vocalist Carina Hartley, bidding farewell to Stephen Cameron somewhere in that process and moving forward with only Wulforst‘s guitar. That shift in dynamic, as well as the added breadth of keys and the combination of Wulforst and Hartley on vocals — a burgeoning pairing that indeed might have one ranting about further potential — has made it one of my go-tos in the couple months since and invariably secured it a place among the best outings of 2022 both in my brain and on the actual list I keep all year to post in December. I could go on here, but the point is if you want to find out how Charley No Face moved forward from here, you can. Here you go.
That said, I’m only glad to have finally dug into these songs deeper than just listening in the car. As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I checked the monitor at 5:50 and the kid was up. He makes himself a lump in his blanket until either The Patient Mrs. or I go upstairs to get him, and there he was, lumping it up. That’s early even for him.
Later now, 8:30AM instead of 6:30. That OHHMS post just went up, for context. Dude’s been downstairs for that two hours, which, again, is early for him, had breakfast and is building his Lego cement mixer while facing the other way, so I’m taking advantage of the quiet moment to write this on my phone.
He didn’t have school this week, you understand. He was off last Friday for Easter and this week has been Spring Break, so yeah. The Patient Mrs. had signed him up for a week-long soccer camp put on for little kids by the Red Bulls, who practice about 10 minutes from the house where we live, right down Rt. 10, but when we went on Monday to check in for the first day, it turns out we had the wrong week. We’d been talking it up to him and everything and he was upset, justifiably so, but recovered quickly enough once we went to Barnes and Noble and bought some new books and some more Legos, including the aforementioned truck. Also a plane that’s been a big hit.
Without that hour and a half every day this week, it’s been a crunch to get stuff done, but I’m glad to note that I didn’t have anything slated these last five days that didn’t get done, and I even filled most of the slate for the next Quarterly Review, which I have the feeling is going to end up being two weeks in July catching up on releases from the first half of this year. I want to write more regular old reviews. Ridiculous that I haven’t covered that Naxatras yet. It’s been out since February and I’ve had the back end of the review set to go for like three weeks. It keeps getting bumped for now-or-never-type premieres. I’m glad to do those, and I wouldn’t be doing them if they weren’t also things I wanted to write about, but I need to find a better balance at least for now. And more hours on the day. I’d like that too, thanks.
Speaking of, I owe The Patient Mrs. thanks for allowing me some time this week off the parenting clock to write. I think she felt guilty about the soccer camp thing since she booked it, but I could’ve just as easily read that email. Not like I know what the date is, ever. In any case, between that and waking up at 5AM with the alarm if not earlier on my own, I have been able to finagle the week. She took him for a walk yesterday with a friend though and I both set up this post and showered, and that felt pretty special. As I’ve said for at least the last several weeks, we’re in survival mode until the end of the semester. I also have no idea when that is. Before June, I figure.
Mental health check-in. I’m definitely not the craziest I’ve ever been. Good weather and being able to get out of the house with the kid more helps for sure. I’ve been wearing ankle and wrist weights though and doing little bits of exercise now and then throughout the day and I can feel compulsion edging in on it. Do I realize that, stay aware of it and step back, or do I just keep going the way I am now, get full-blown crazy like I did going running two summers ago, hurt myself, get frustrated and retreat into months of shame-bingeing hazelnut butter or pesto, putting on yet more weight in the interim and continuing to feel terrible about myself? STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT!
But today I’m okay and that’ll do. The Pecan and I didn’t have the week we planned, but we had a really good time the last few days. Not hiccup-less by any stretch, but by and large a win. I’ve tried not to do too much of this — sitting with my face buried in the screen while he does something else, but at least I’m sitting on the floor nearby and I’m present if he needs or wants something. He says, “Do you want to play with me?” now though in a way that makes resistance basically futile.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head. Gimme show next week. Might do another all-request one since the last was so much fun. We’ll see. Thanks for reading.
FRM.
