I shudder to think what Caltrop would’ve been able to do with a third full-length. It’s been 10 years (and about a month) since the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, four-piece released their sophomore LP, Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes (review here), and it continues to amaze me just how vivid of a mental impression it makes. Sometimes when a song gets stuck in your head, it’s like a vague impression or you only hear one piece. With this record, the tone and the production stay with you, so you don’t just hear a riff or a melody in your head, you hear it as it actually sounds. The shared vocals of guitarist Sam Taylor and bassist Murat Dirlik continue to be a defining feature, as well as the dizzying chemistry between them, guitarist Adam Nolton and drummer John Crouch. I never got to see this band live. I very much wish I had.

Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes was produced by Nick Peterson, and oh my it does jam. Consider “Light Does Not Get Old,” which picks up in pastoral-but-progressive fashion from “Ancient” immediately preceding and the opener “Birdsong.” The one-two at the outset is a boon to the listening experience on the whole, and I can’t sit here and take away from the memorability of those two tracks, and “Light Does Not Get Hold” both intends to and does switch up the vibe, but the album isn’t so much ‘front-loaded’ as ‘loaded,’ with the likes of the fuzz-noisy “Shadows and Substance” — some good old Southern-style West Coast noise rock — and the 13-minute focal point “Perihelion,” “Form and Abandon” returning to ground somewhat before falling apart and leaving quiet sparse guitar at the end, “Blessed” foreshadowing a subsequent decade of heavy psychedelic blues rock, or “Zelma” wrapping up with a humming drone running underneath wistful post-rock instrumentalism as though something just had to dirty it up.

Or maybe dirtying it is the wrong idea, but at very least something to make it grounded, because as progressive as Caltrop get in these eight tracks and 53 minutes — the vinyl is three sides on a 2LP — they never lose their organic feel. Some of that is the vocals of Dirlik and Taylor. You can hear voices push themselves and crack throughout, and it makes “Ancient” all the more of a standout. It happens later in “Light Does Not Get Old” as well, as the precursor to a fuzzed-out freaked-up psychedelic lead because fucking obviously. Caltrop aren’t the only band ever to smash different parts together and make it work, but there are moments on this record that sound like they were just trying to have fun playing opposites. I interviewed Taylor at the time and he talked about the differing songwriters and how everyone had a hand in putting the album together. I had asked how soon after their 2008 debut, World Class, they started writing new songs:

We wrote way back, in the last couple years, “Ancient,” “Light Does Not Get Old,” we wrote “Perihelion” and we wrote ”Blessed.” Those were really three pieces of material that we’d written and recorded as early as 2010. We recorded some of those three songs, a very rough version of them, and we were listening to those recordings, we just got together with Nick Peterson, who did the record, and we just set up and did two days – didn’t even try all that super hard to get the takes right – and we listened through those as a rough version of what we were going to do to record, and then we came back and re-recorded all of them at that warehouse in a serious recording session, and got them all done and mixed. We decided it was a 12-minute thing, a 13-minute thing and an eight-minute thing. Although it was great, we decided it needed more material to offset the longer, dense stuff.

We decided to write four things that we each brought. We normally are real egalitarian and all operate within the writing process. This time, we put these four things, and everybody brought something. Everybody brought an idea and we turned that into a song. We tried to limit them to five minutes. We wrote four five-minute things to offset the more dense, longer material that we’d already written, and we recorded those in a separate [session]. We wrote those within probably eight months and recorded them in a separate session. To answer your question, this has been kind of ready to go, because we ended up not getting Holidays for Quince to agree to do it until… We wanted it out last summer or fall, honestly. Then they wanted to have a finished product for a few months, so it ended up getting basically put off until this spring, because there’s no point in putting a record out in January. That’s what happened there.

It’s almost quaint now to think of an album only being delayed by a couple months, but that aside, it’s the structure of the thing I want to point out and the idea that, okay, they needed more songs so everybody got to put together a piece. That’s “Birdsong,” “Shadow and Substance,” “Form and Abandon” and “Zelma.” And it works. You would think it should sound disjointed? Well it does. And guess what? It doesn’t fucking matter. Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes, 10 years later, still bounces from one idea to the next, one song to the next, in a way that feels completely free and completely its own.

I guess in the end that’s what I’m trying to hone in on here. It’s not that Caltrop didn’t give a shit. Far from it. You don’t write songs this complex if you don’t care. But they took a live, spontaneous approach to their recording, they let themselves show a little personality, they broke a few of the “rules” of what making a heavy record should be, and though I never. got. to. see. them. live., having Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes as a document of what made them such a special band to start with isn’t to be undervalued.

These guys were friggin’ great in the right way at the wrong time. A summer album. I wish they’d done another record and I wish they’d gotten their due on this one.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

So the site passed 15,000 posts this morning. The Sasquatch review was number 15,000 published. I guess that’s not nothing. I’m not sure what it is. Thanks though, you know, for reading.

Negative headspace this week despite spending pretty much the whole thing writing about good music. Food issues. Nervous about the prospect of flying to Germany and being away for longer than I have been in about three years. Nervous that I’m continuing to fuck up as a parent, as a husband. All of it, really. This too.

Also tired of being sick. Still with the head cold, allergies, whatever it is post-covid. I’m glad to say that while the whole house has been sick, everyone seems to be on the mend. The Patient Mrs. is currently dying The Pecan’s hair purple for wacky hair day at preschool. Gonna have some eggs in a bit. So could be worse, certainly. Yesterday was rough. Today we’ll see.

The good news is my mother is coming for dinner, and it’s been about four weeks since that happened since her house had an outbreak right around the same time we did here, the two thankfully unrelated. But everybody’s well enough now that interaction can happen, so that’ll be good. And tomorrow we head north to CT to see The Patient Mrs.’ mother and sister as well. Leaving the house, changing things up. Good things.

Couple premieres next week, some cool stuff. I’m gonna stream the Foot record on Wednesday. In my head though I’m already starting to get ready for Freak Valley. I’ve never been before, so that should be an interesting experience. Been a long time since I was outside my comfort zone like that. I hope I remember how much I love it.

Great and safe weekend. Watch your head, wear your mask, don’t forget to hydrate. Thanks again for reading.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

The only bummer about the news that North Carolinian acts Black Skies and Caltrop have teamed up for a tour is that they’re not coming north and playing a show with Hull. I guess you can’t win ’em all, and good for you West Coast types getting these bands out your way. Why shouldn’t Long Beach have the best weather in the universe and killer gigs? Seems only fair.

Black Skies‘ last album, On the Wings of Time, will be a year old by the time this tour is over. I never gave it a proper review (to my regret), but it’s a solid record and I’ve included the stream from their Bandcamp page below if you want to check it out. Caltrop‘s latest, Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes (review here), was also a hoot.

Here are the dates [PLEASE NOTE: Dates updated as of Sept. 24]:

North Carolina bands Caltrop and Black Skies announce Fall tour dates

Friends through the North Carolina Triangle Area metal scene, Black Skies and Caltrop were obvious tour mates as the two both share psychedelic sludge leanings and Southern heavy rock roots. This November, the two bands will hit the road for a coast-to-coast tour.

Oct 31 – Lexington, KY @ Sidecar
Nov 1 – Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s Music Joint
Nov 2 – Iowa City, IA @ Gabe’s
Nov 3 – Omaha, NE @ The Sandbox
Nov 4 – Denver, CO @ Aqualung’s
Nov 5 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Burt’s Tiki Lounge
Nov 6 – Boise, ID @ The Shredder
Nov 7 – Seattle, WA @ The Comet
Nov 8 – Portland, OR @ Plan B
Nov 9 – Eureka, CA @ Little Red Lion
Nov 10 – San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern
Nov 11 – Long Beach, CA @ Blue Café
Nov 12 – Tempe, AZ @ Yucca
Nov 13 – Albuquerque, NM @ Burt’s Tiki Lounge
Nov 14 – Oklahoma City, OK @ The Conservatory
Nov 15 – Texarkana, AR @ Arrow Bar
Nov 17 – Atlanta, GA @ 529
Nov 18 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Chapel Hill Underground

My general assumption when it comes to conducting interviews — especially for people with whom I’ve never spoken before — is that the other person has no idea who I am, what I may have written about their work or any of it, and neither do they have interest in knowing. In that regard, guitarist/vocalist Sam Taylor of North Carolinian foursome Caltrop caught me a little off-guard when he asked if I was the one who wrote the review of his band’s latest album, Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes (Holidays for Quince) that appeared on this site.

Without mentioning that I’m the only person who does reviews here, I said I was. I’d been asking about the pairing of obscure and concrete ideas that, to me, the album title and the names of several of the songs — “Shadows and Substance,” “Form and Abandon,” and so on — seemed to be driving toward. When I brought it up, Taylor already had some idea of what I was talking about. I was wrong, as it happened, in my interpretation. The real answer, go figure, was both more specific and more vague: 10 million years is how long it takes energy to form in the sun and eight minutes is as long as it takes to get to the earth. I was way off.

But I mention it not just to point out how off-base I was in estimating what I thought the album was trying to convey, but also to note that in his response, Taylor seemed to be speaking more to the review than to the question I’d actually asked, which was something unique among all the interviews I’ve done so far for this site. I’ve spoken to people who’ve seen their reviews beforehand before, and sometimes I’m more comfortable about that than others — it depends on the review and the amount of typos I find in it later — but Taylor was directly answering the case I made, and even having been wrong, that was exciting.

For me, it was also a thrill to talk to someone from Caltrop, of whom I’ve been a fan since their self-titled EP my way in 2005. I’d missed the release of 2008’s World Class (also on Holidays for Quince), but caught up to it later, and found the band’s growth as a heavy and intricately pastoral act as engaging as it was progressive. Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes, four years later, loses nothing creatively for the length of time, and as Taylor explains in the interview that follows here, the process by which he and the rest of the band — bassist/vocalist Murat Dirlik, guitarist Adam Nolton and drummer John Crouch — rounded out the record is as interesting as the record itself, basically moving away from their joint writing process to each write a whole track and bring it in to the others.

Below, Taylor talks about some of Caltrop‘s motives for taking this approach with Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes, gives his feelings as regards his band’s close relationship with Brooklyn post-metallers Hull, with whom Caltrop has toured several times (the two groups also appeared in each other’s press shots: see if you can spot them here and here), and discusses a range of other topics, including touring-life vs. real-life concerns and the reasoning behind noting who’s singing which part of a song between him and Dirlik in the liner notes of the album.

You’ll find the (mostly) complete 3,500-word Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.

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As the album title indicates, Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes sets itself to the task of organizing difficult concepts against easier ones. For the human mind to fathom 10 million years would take almost that long, but eight minutes you know. You have some idea of what you can do in that time, whereas 10 million years might as well be infinity. The music of North Carolinian four-piece Caltrop, for whom Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes marks their third outing (the first being a 2006 demo) and second through Holidays for Quince Records behind 2008’s World Class, works in similar fashion, blending such intangible qualities as pastoral vibes and progressive complexities against heavy riffs and thick, weighted grooves. Guitarist Sam Taylor and bassist Murat Dirlik (who also painted the album’s cover) trade vocals back and forth within and between songs, adding further variety to an already diverse eight tracks as guitarist Adam Nolton and drummer John Crouch fill out the Caltrop lineup – the former bolstering and playing off of Taylor’s work and the latter adding subtly technical snare fills to “Light Does Not Get Old” and proving equally capable of driving forward noise rock crunch and punctuating airy ambience within the 5:35 span of “Form and Abandon.” Caltrop are good at playing one side off the other, and Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes shows that just because a recording is raw or natural-sounding it can’t also be cerebrally engaged or melodic.

Both opener “Birdsong” and “Ancient,” which follows immediately, feature landmark guitar solos in their second half, but in fact they’re two very different songs, having in common mostly their tandem efforts to set the course for Caltrop’s breadth on their second full-length. The first cut feels like a journey and is; Taylor’s vocals leading the way with the guitar almost as much as the bass comes to prominence on the fuller, fuzzier Dirlik-fronted “Ancient.” Of the several things one might accuse Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes of being, redundant is not one of them. The album has its indulgent moments and ultimately requires more than a few listens to really sink in – the winding progressivism of “Ancient” alone feels like a test, warm and naturally-toned though it is – but every second of its 53:14 demonstrates its purpose, and Caltrop leave nothing wanting for individual take or even rocking simplicity. They sound like a band who enjoy making simple things complicated, and one good at it to boot. “Light Does Not Get Old” kicks in immediately from “Ancient” and is the most direct transition on the record, bluesy guitar leads backed by jazz rhythms stepping aside for lighter-touch modern-metal timing – Dirlik on bass and Crouch on drums both turn in remarkable performances throughout – as setup for the verses from Taylor. Neither he nor Dirlik is an overly technical singer, but as the music within these tracks shows increasing complexity throughout the album’s progression, their vocals serve to play up and maintain a natural, human feel to the recording. Mostly dry, mostly single-layer, they don’t soar by any stretch, but they serve the songs – and that’s more important.

A bit of slide guitar in “Shadows and Substance” (another invocation of the album title’s idea of vague vs. concrete, perhaps?) provides a pathway over the barrage of tom work from Crouch, and soon the shuffle is underway, Dirlik providing choice fills amid an insistent riff. There isn’t a chorus, per se. Instead, Caltrop continue to pummel that main, cyclical guitar line until gradually it seems to develop a solo and embark from there on a long fadeout. One imagines it’s something that works better in a live setting – minus the fade, plus about five more minutes of balls-out jamming – but it adds a level of intrigue as the 13-minute “Perihelion” begins its deceptively humble intro. Of all the tracks on Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes, “Perihelion” is one of two (near as I can tell) on which Taylor and Dirlik share vocal duties, and certainly the one on which they do the best job of it, the guitarist coming in later to provide despondent contrast to the pastures Dirlik constructs in earlier parts. The fuzz is warm, again, and gentle, and the vocals sweet, and “Perihelion” is easy to get lost in by the time its build really begins toward the five-minute mark. At 6:11, Nolton, Dirlik and Taylor step back to let Crouch introduce the progression of the second half, which he does with frenetic percussiveness, the other instruments joining in first as single-hit punctuation and then soon a full-on descending riff-and-solo interplay that opens into loose-sounding crashes before taking off into the culmination. Taylor takes over on vocals for a twice-repeated bluesman’s lament capped by the lines, “Lord knows I can’t take it anymore/I’m trying to ease your mind/Whoa yeah.”

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It feels like cheating somehow to post the song “Blessed” from North Carolinian foursome Caltrop‘s new album, Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes. I almost want to put out a spoiler alert with it — WARNING: THIS SONG CONTAINS AN ALBUM-DEFINING APEX.

Maybe that’s not the kind of thing that would fit on a government warning label, but it certainly applies to “Blessed,” which is the penultimate track on Caltrop‘s second full-length for Holidays for Quince Records. Like the rest of the tracks, it follows a blindingly creative direction that never lets go of its immediacy or tonal warmth, but really, to pick one song to premiere that represents Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes as a whole is impossible. The record is too varied, too progressively structured and too engaging as a single work to be so easily parsed.

So I picked what, to me, most feels like the culmination of it. We start off with winding, jazzy fuzz, but soon Caltrop — guitarist/vocalist Sam Taylor, bassist/vocalist Murat Dirlik (who also painted the butterflynoceros on the album cover), guitarist Adam Nolton, and drummer John Crouch — veer into the song’s proggy crux. Other parts of the record feel more informed by the band’s time on the road alongside Brooklyn post-metallers Hull, in what they’re playing more than how it actually sounds, but “Blessed” balances the same kind of tonal sweetness that made 2008’s World Class such a joy with neo-Southern lead work and an overarching build that sweeps you into it before you even realize you’re gone.

And then the warning above applies. “Blessed” has forward motion so subtle but so effective, I couldn’t help pick it to stream, and I hope you’ll agree when you enjoy it on the player below:

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=caltrop.xml]

Ten Million Years and Eight Minutes was recorded and mixed by Nick Petersen in Chapel Hill, NC, and mastered by James Plotkin. The album will be available April 3 as a CD or download and can be pre-ordered through Holidays for Quince here. For more info, check out the band on Thee Facebooks or hit up their website.

Caltrop on tour:

04/12 Charleston, SC Tin Roof
04/14 Charlotte, NC Snug Harbor
04/20 Brooklyn, NY St. Vitus w/ Hull
04/21 Richmond, VA Strange Matter “Year of Shit III”
05/19 Asheville, NC The Get Down
05/22 Harrisonburg, VA Blue Nile
05/23 Pittsburgh, PA 31st Street Pub
05/24 Columbus, OH Carabar

Probably five years ago, a standard yellow padded envelope came across my desk with an elaborate predatory bird drawn on it in red permanent marker. I liked the drawing so much that I kept the envelope and still have it. Of course, it helped that Caltrop‘s 2006 demo, which was contained inside, was killer. The band struck a dirty blues-based sludgy note without going overboard in terms of the aggression, and I still take out that demo every now and then and listen to it.

I even included a track in the all-Southern podcast a couple months back, if you want proof.

In the intervening years between then and now, the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, four-piece released their first full-length, World Class, through local imprint Holidays for Quince Records. That was 2008, and though I don’t really have any excuse for doing so, I completely missed the boat on the record. Hey, it happens.

I had planned on picking up World Class when Caltrop played Webster Hall in NYC with Batillus and Hull as the two closed out their tour together at the end of last month, but real life intervened in the form of homework and I didn’t get there. Nonetheless, enough was enough when it came to not owning the album. I dialed up Caltrop‘s website to see if they had a copy for sale, and when they didn’t, I went next to the label. Lo and behold, the package came in Wednesday’s mail.

The sweet Hendrixian fuzz of “Bloodroot” makes World Class worth the $12 I paid for it anyway, but there’s something humble about the vocals too. It’s the same quality that made Pennsylvania‘s Pearls and Brass such a delight to listen to when they were together. It’s folkish and rural, swampy and humid-sounding, but still edgy and better suited to the music than you might think. There’s no pretense in what Caltrop does to being sludge, or stoner, or whatever. They just play the heavy tones they want to hear. That comes through on World Class, and so, the record every bit lives up to its name.

Only shame about the whole thing is that I’m three years late on the album, but if you head over to the Caltrop page on Facebook, it looks like they recently did some recording, so maybe I’ll get my chance to be more timely sometime before 2011’s out. Either way, now that I know what I’ve been missing, I’ll be sure it doesn’t happen again.