Friday Full-Length: Masters of Reality, Give Us Barabbas
Posted in Bootleg Theater on July 2nd, 2021 by JJ KoczanA Masters of Reality album that’s more of a collection of odds and ends and utterly disjointed and still somehow cohesive, Give Us Barabbas surfaced in 2004 through the band’s self-release imprint Brownhouse Recordings and has its roots in a got-shelved 1995 long-player called The Ballad of Jody Frosty. What would’ve been the follow-up to 1992’s Sunrise on the Sufferbus (discussed here) never made it to public ears, and in addition to its title-track, which appears here as the string-laced opener, an instantly memorable hook of a melody that also served to intro the live album Flak ‘n’ Flight (discussed here), it featured “Voice and the Vision,” “Still on the Hill,” “Bela Alef Rose,” and “Brown House on the Green Road,” which show up on Give Us Barabbas as well, along with pieces like “Desert Song” with Ginger Baker (Cream) on drums, “Jinalee Jindalie” with guest vocals by Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots and the John Lennon cover “It’s So Hard.”
What’s ironic about the Lennon track is that it’s not the most Beatlesian inclusion on the record at all, or even the most Lennon-solo feeling. Taken from Imagine, it’s Lennon doing bluesy Elvis worship, while “I Walk Beside Your Love” comes through like a lost Dakota demo, and “Voice and the Vision,” “Off to Tiki Ti” and “Don’t Get Caught by the Huntsman’s Bow” tap into that weird, kid-song singalong spirit of “Rocky Raccoon” or “All Together Now,” and though the follow-the-bouncing-ball oddity of “Don’t Get Caught by the Huntsman’s Bow” is delightfully strange as twisted through Masters of Reality spearhead Chris Goss‘ vision of folk and might be more “Octopus’ Garden” than “Yellow Submarine,” the spirit is there one way or the other. Personnel, arrangements and styles vary throughout, but songwriting carries the album through its 12-song/41-minute entirety, and however they came together, from the stand-up bass that gives such warmth to “Voice and the Vision” to the handclaps in “Off to Tiki Ti” and the gentle blend of acoustic and electric guitar on “Jindalee Jindalie” — never mind the harmonies between Goss and Weiland — the album is a masterclass in being exactly what it wants to be, each song fostering its own intent and structure while feeding into the overarching strength of the whole.
Goss is of course known for his production work and collaborations with Kyuss, Fatso Jetson, Nebula, UNKLE, Ian Astbury, Mark Lanegan, Queens of the Stone Age, Melissa Auf der Maur, as well as for performing on records for many of the same and in projects like Goon Moon and Desert Sessions, etc. He’s someone who’s had an essential hand in making heavy rock and roll what it is today, especially in his work helping to shape Californian desert
rock in the studio. Fair enough. Give Us Barabbas is something of a look at the aftermath of that. It was the first full-length Masters of Reality put out following 2001’s Deep in the Hole (discussed here), and the subsequent European touring with Nick Oliveri and Josh Homme — both then of Queens of the Stone Age — documented in 2002 on the aforementioned Flak ‘n’ Flight live outing. Deep in the Hole is probably the closest Masters of Reality ever came to doing ‘desert rock’ on aesthetic terms, and it felt like a conscious decision. Give Us Barabbas, with its fluid lineup, older songs and reworked pieces, reconciles some of that with the pre-“alt-rock” alternative rock of Goss and the band’s earliest output in their 1988 self-titled, aka The Blue Garden. Perhaps that’s where some of the Beatles-style songcraft comes in. If you’re going back to the roots of a thing, that’s a good place to head.
But for all the variety throughout these songs — and there isn’t a complete version of Give Us Barabbas streaming anywhere, you’ll note “Hey Diana” and “It’s So Hard” are missing from the playlist above; sorry, I did my best and I’m not about to just upload the thing myself without permission — there’s nothing haphazard about them. The sharpness of sound in “I Walk Beside Your Love” is no less purposeful than the lush “The Ballad of Judy Frosty,” and the boogie in “Brown House on the Green Road” adds movement to the harmonies in “Bela Alef Rose” just before it and “Still on the Hill” — are we talking about the ‘Fool’ there? — a short time later, that track working similarly leading into “The Desert Song,” which renews the shuffle. At this point, Masters of Reality had already been a band for over 15 years, and with Goss as the ringleader — he gets co-billing on the album cover, even listed first on some versions — they were obviously comfortable going wherever they wanted to go. Comfortable enough to tuck “Jindalee Jindalie” away as the penultimate cut on the record, effectively buried in the linear CD format like the treasure that it is, hidden away with the rest of the tracks on top. And as if to underscore the point, to cap with “Don’t Get Caught by the Huntsman’s Bow,” with its Super Mario Bros. 3 keyboard line and a druggy whoknowswhat even beyond what Masters of Reality fostered on 1999’s Welcome to the Western Lodge, well, yeah. A band so willing to mess around with their own processes should only be admired.
Masters of Reality‘s last album was 2009’s Pine/Cross Dover (review here). There was word they were to put out a record and tour Europe in 2020, but neither materialized, the tour for pandemic reasons, the record presumably because there was no tour. Fair enough. Chris Goss posted a few tracks on Soundcloud a while back, but there’s been no solid release date offered for the next release that I’ve found, though I’d be happy to be corrected on that. He worked on John Garcia‘s last solo album and has been busy with various other concerns, his social media a blend of rock and roll, conspiracy theories and so on. Strange times. I’d still be plenty happy to have another Masters of Reality album, should the occasion come about.
Thanks for reading. As always, I hope you enjoy.
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The Pecan woke up this morning before 6AM and when I finally went up to bring him down after finishing the above — it was a bit after 7; always takes him a while before he’s willing to get up anyway — dude was a fucking tornado. Not so much bouncing off the walls as crashing through them. He took a nap yesterday afternoon, as did we all, and it clearly did him some good. Me too. I was a god damned wreck before that. After, just a regular wreck.
Family coming down from CT and from up the hill in the neighborhood later on today, so that will be enjoyable and probably a lot. How it goes. I’ll shower, take a xanax, have a shake for lunch; self-care. It’ll be fine.
Next week is the Quarterly Review. Can you hang with it? It’s a full two weeks. Next week and the week after. 100 releases front to back. I haven’t done a double-QR in a while, and I’m tired of looking at all the same folders on my desktop. This will clear out most of them. Maybe I’ll even make a new banner if I have time.
The Pecan starts camp on Tuesday, which is what will make that Quarterly Review even remotely possible. What a wreck these past two weeks have been in between school and camp starting up. He’ll be going three hours a day, five days a week. Dude needs to be out of the house. He just needs it. And after the pandemic year, I figure the more socialization he gets the better off he’ll be in the longer run. But even more than that, it’s just about accommodating all of his GO. Because he’s all go.
I’m interviewing Eddie Brnabic from Hippie Death Cult tomorrow. Was supposed to be yesterday, but the day was just too much of a mess. Couldn’t handle it in the ol’ brain. With the QR on, I don’t know when that will be posted, but I’ll make it happen whenever I have a spare couple minutes next week. Don’t expect a lot of news or anything like that. 10 records written up per day is the mission. Everything else is gravy.
Speaking of interviews, thanks to those of you who checked out that one with Dave Wyndorf. I got some kind words on that and it was much appreciated.
All on social media, interestingly. Not one actual comment on the site this week, which is odd. Usually there’s something. Too hot, maybe? I don’t know. People are sweet either way, mostly. I’ll take what I can get.
New logo merch coming soon. Sleeveless for your sun’s-out-guns-out summer, and tote bags basically because The Patient Mrs. likes tote bags. It’s the logo with a cool little “est. 2009” on there. I’ll post it when it’s live in the meantime, thanks to MIBK for making it happen.
Gimme show is next week with the second Neurosis thing. That’s super fun. Need to do the voice tracks, which I guess now’s as good a time as any. Let me get on that.
Thanks for reading. Great and safe weekend. Hydrate and all that.
And in just four minutes! The song begins with a fade in of guitar and drums and sets up a waltz of resonant strumming and jazzy ride cymbal and maybe mellotron (?) before Goss unveils the subtle raciness of the hook — “I’ve found my place in bed/Three feet beneath your head/I wanted to stay home/I couldn’t think of nothing new” — and croons into the next verse with the same final line repeating at the end, then comes back around and cycles through one more time, and that’s it. Done. But it’s beautiful and theatrical and lush and affecting, and genuinely shifts the mood of the listener even as the band follows it up with “T.U.S.A.,” which finds Baker taking lead vocals on kind of a goofy semi-spoken rant about how no one in America can make tea properly, which is to say, how the British do it. “Now this is serious,” Baker says in the opening line, signaling that of the many things the song might be, serious is not one of them.
