Posted in Whathaveyou on August 3rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
For my money, which I just might spend on this reissue, Pelican‘s Australasia (discussed here) is one of the best heavy records of all time. If you narrow those parameters to instrumental releases, it only moves higher up the list. Issued through Hydra Head, it broke ground for heavy atmospherics in a way that continues to resonate, and as one of series of reissues through Thrill Jockey Records (more info here), this reissue follows a stint for the band in Europe that included a headline slot at Freak Valley 2022 (review here) in Germany that I felt lucky to be able to witness. Guess that saves you the trouble of reading the review, which I’m pretty sure no one was going to do anyhow.
The release date is Aug. 19 and the vinyl is colored to the cover’s theme — always classy, I think — with preorders up through Bandcamp. I have to imagine that if these don’t go beforehand, they will by the time the band plays a weekender in September that includes a stop at Post Festival in Indianapolis. I’ve never been to X-Ray Arcade in Cudahy (unless it’s the old Blue Pig), but I’ve hit Pyramid Scheme in Michigan before, and that place is fabulous. But really, anywhere Pelican are showing up is where you want to be.
From the PR wire:
Pelican announces deluxe reissue of their classic debut album Australasia Out on August 19th, 2022
Featuring never-before released material from the era, remastered audio by Josh Bonati, and expanded artwork
Original guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec has rejoined the quartet, reinstating the band’s original lineup
Following a headlining European tour including sets at Dunk! Festival, Freak Valley Festival, and Hellfest, Chicago/Los Angeles quartet Pelican have announced the first of their Thrill Jockey reissues, Australasia, out on August 19th. The deluxe reissue will feature remastered audio by Josh Bonati and bonus material, including a never-before shared track, a live recording of the album’s title track from the era of the album’s release, a remix by James Plotkin, and artwork by ISIS/SUMAC/Hydra Head founder Aaron Turner.
Pelican’s debut album Australasia, originally released in late 2003 by Hydra Head Records, is a landmark record in the shifting tides of heavy music that took place at the turn of the millennium. 20 years since its release and with several sold out represses, Australasia is a proven essential for any listener exploring the bounds of rock music. Following the release of the band’s auspicious self-titled EP, Australasia’s singular integration of melodic complexity and tremendous density redefined conceptions of what constituted “heavy.” Pelican’s unique manipulation of atmosphere and dynamics seamlessly alchemized their disparate influences beyond metal into music grand, mercurial and utterly sublime, worthy of the album’s namesake.
Billowing clouds of strange serenity give way to tectonic riffs. Hypnotic rhythms chug at the precipice between doom and euphoria. Guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec twirl soaring harmonies around the roaring thunder of bassist Bryan Herweg and drummer Larry Herweg. Throughout the album, the quartet move as one like a glacier, awesome and forever imbuing the landscape with their mark. Australasia stands as a pioneering work, unmatched in the level of unbridled beauty and devastation.
Pelican will be playing a handful of Midwest shows this September, including a headlining set at Indianapolis’s Post Festival.
Pelican tour dates Sep. 9 – Grand Rapids, MI – The Pyramid Scheme Sep. 10 – Indianapolis, IN – Post Festival at The Vogue Theatre Sep. 11 – Cudahy, WI – X-Ray Arcade
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 24th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Holy trinity? Maybe it would be if the rest of Pelican‘s discography wasn’t also so good. Still, you won’t hear a bad word from me about Australasia (discussed here), and I still remember the first time I listened to follow-up The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw was at a gate at Chicago O’Hare airport waiting for a connecting flight to Austin, Texas, for SXSW a couple rows away from Sanford Parker, to whom I was too shy to say hello. I have a million stories like that, about not talking to people. More than ever, it seems.
City of Echoes was badass too, crunchy and defying-expectations-of-escapism and all. But the additional cool news to go with the remasters that Pelican‘s upcoming European tour will include founding member LaurentSchroeder-Lebec is certainly welcome, though Dallas Thomas was killer as well. Truth of the matter is I guess I’ll take Pelican as they come. It is my deep hope to be able to catch them at Freak Valley Festival. If that doesn’t happen, well at least I’ll have more stories of not interacting with humans.
Hoo-mans.
Here’s word from the PR wire. Listen to Pelican today:
Thrill Jockey to reissue three essential albums by Pelican:
Australasia
The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw
City of Echoes
Deluxe vinyl reissues throughout 2022-2023 will include rarities, unreleased outtakes, demos and remastered audio
Pelican touring Europe this Spring with original lineup
Thrill Jockey are proud to reissue acclaimed and innovative classic albums by Chicago/Los Angeles quartet Pelican: Australasia (2003), The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw (2005), and City of Echoes (2007). The trilogy is streaming now and will be issued on deluxe vinyl editions throughout 2022 and 2023. The reissues will include a bevy of bonus material comprising rarities, unreleased recordings, long out of print singles & EPs and more. Each album will feature painstakingly remastered audio by Josh Bonati as well as deluxe artwork that recreates the classic artwork expanded to include unseen images sourced from the band’s archive.
Pelican have announced a European tour this spring, including their return to headlining Dunk! Festival, as well as rescheduled appearances at Hell Fest, Freak Valley Festival, and a handful of headlining shows. Following the departure of long-standing guitarist Dallas Thomas, the band will be joined on upcoming dates by founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, reuniting the classic Pelican lineup behind their first three albums.
Pelican is a dreamlike art-metal institution, a band whose kaleidoscopic melodies and ocean-dredging riffs have now hypnotized audiences for more than two decades. Emerging from the frozen tundras of Chicago, Pelican were early adopters in blending majestic repetition with sludge metal’s skull-vibrating bluster, adding their own singular sense of keening emo-psychedelia and heavy-metal motorik. Since then, their prismatic instrumental mesmerism has rippled across six critically acclaimed studio albums, been featured in television and film, and influenced countless bands in their wake.
Pelican tour dates May 28 – Ghent, BE – Dunk! Festival June 12 – Vienna, AT – WUK June 13 – Linz, AT – Kapu June 14 – Dudingen, CH – Bad Bonn June 15 – Karlsruhe, DE – Jubez June 16 – Netphen-Deuz, DE – Freak Valley Festival June 17 – Strasbourg, FR – La Laiterie June 18 – Clisson, FR – Hellfest
You know what? We’re through the first week of the Quarterly Review as of this post. Not too bad. I feel like it’s been smooth going so far to such a degree that I’m even thinking about adding an 11th day comprised purely of releases that came my way this week and will invariably come in next week too. Crazy, right? Bonus day QR. We’ll see if I get there, but I’m thinking about it. That alone should tell you something.
But let me not get ahead of myself. Day five commence.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Howling Giant, Alteration
Let the story be that when the pandemic hit, Nashville’s Howling Giant took to the airwaves to provide comfort, character and a bit of ‘home’ — if one thinks of live performance as home — to their audience. With a steady schedule of various live streams on Twitch, some playing music, some playing D&D, the band engaged their listenership in a new and exciting way, finding a rare bright point in one of the darkest years of recent history. Alteration, a crisp four-song/20-minute EP, is born out of those streamed jams, with songs named by the band’s viewers/listeners — kudos to whoever came up with “Luring Alluring Rings” — and, being entirely instrumental from a band growing more and more focused on vocal arrangements, sound more like they’re on their way to being finished than are completely done. However, that’s also the point of the release, essentially to showcase unfinished works in progress that have emerged in a manner that nobody expected. It is another example from last year-plus that proves the persistence of creativity, and is all the more beautiful for that.
Vaguely lysergic, twanging with a non-chestbeating or jingoistic ’70s American singer-songwriter feel, Rose City Band‘s Earth Trip brings sentiment without bitterness in its songs, engaging as the title hints with nature in songs like “Silver Roses,” “In the Rain,” “Lonely Planes,” “Ramblin’ with the Day,” “Rabbit” and “Dawn Patrol.” An outlet for Ripley Johnson, also of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, the “band” isn’t so much in Rose City Band, but there is some collaboration — pedal steel here and there, as on “Ramblin’ with the Day” — though it’s very much Johnson‘s own craft and performance at the core of this eight-song set. This is the third Rose City Band long-player in three years, but quickly as it may have come about, the tracks never feel rushed — hushed, if anything — and Johnson effectively casts himself in among the organic throughout the proceedings, making the listener feel nothing if not welcome to join the ramble.
Johannesburg, South Africa’s The Tazers are suited to a short-release format, as their Dream Machine EP shows, bringing together four tracks with psychedelic precociousness and garage rock attitude to spare, with just an edge of classic heavy to keep things grooving. Their latest work opens with its languid and lysergic title-track, which sets up the shove of “Go Away” and the shuffle in “Lonely Road” — both under three and a half minutes long, with nary a wasted second in them, despite sounding purposefully like tossoffs — and the latter skirts the line of coming undone, but doesn’t, of course, but in the meantime sets up the almost proto-New Wave in the early going on “Around Town,” only later to give way to the band’s most engaging melody and a deceptively patient, gentle finish, which considering some of the brashness in the earlier tracks is a surprise. A pleasant one, though, and not the first the three-piece have brought forth by the time they get to the end of Dream Machine‘s ultra-listenable 16-minute run.
Pressed in an ultra-limited edition of 34 tapes (the physical version also has a bonus track), Kavrila‘s Rituals III brings together about 16 minutes of heavy hardcore and post-hardcore, a thickened undertone giving something of a darker mood to the crunch of “Equality” as guitars are layered in subtly in a higher register, feeding into the urgency without competing with the drums or vocals. Opener “Sunday” works at more of a rush while “Longing” has more of a lurch at least to its outset before gradually elbowing its way into a more careening groove, but the bridge being built is between sludge and hardcore, and while the four-piece aren’t the first to build it, they do well here. If we’re picking highlights, closer “Elysium” has deft movement, intensity and atmosphere in kind, and still features a vocal rawness that pushes the emotional crux between the verses and choruses to make the transitions that much smoother. The ending fades out early behind those shouts, leaving the vocals stranded, calling out the song’s title into a stark emptiness.
Brutal rebirth. Robin Van Oyen is the lone figure behind Bruges, Belgium-based death-doom outfit Gateway, and Flesh Reborn is his first EP in three years. Marked out with guest guitar solos by M., the four-track/25-minute offering keeps its concentration on atmosphere as much as raw punishment, and while one would be correct to call it ‘extreme’ in its purpose and execution, its deathliest aspects aren’t just the growling vocals or periods of intense blast, but the wash of distortion that lays over the offering as a whole, from “Hel” through “Slumbering Crevasses,” the suitably twisting, later lurching “Rack Crawler” and the grandeur-in-filth 12-minute closing title-track, at which point the fullness of the consumption is revealed at last. Unbridled as it seems, this material is not without purpose and is not haphazard. It is the statement it intends to be, and its depths are shown to be significant as Van Oyen pulls you further down into them with each passing moment, finally leaving you there amid residual drone.
Admirably punk in its dexterity, Bala‘s debut album, Maleza, arrives as a nine-track pummelfest from the Spanish duo of guitarist/vocalist Anx and drummer/vocalist V., thickened with sludgy intent and aggression to spare. The starts and stops of opener “Agitar” provide a noise-rock-style opening that hints at the tonal push to come throughout “Hoy No” — the verse melody of which seems to reinvent The Bangles — while the subsequent “X” reaches into greater breadth, vocals layered effectively as a preface perhaps to the later grunge of “Riuais,” which arrives ahead of the swaggering riff and harsh sneer of “Bessie” the lumbering finale “Una Silva.” Whether brooding in “Quieres Entrar” or explosive in its shove in “Cien Obstaculos,” Maleza offers stage-style energy with clarity of vision and enough chaos to make the anger feel genuine. There’s apparently some hype behind Bala, and fair enough, but this is legitimately one of the best debut albums I’ve heard in 2021.
French prog-fuzz five-piece Tremor Ama make a coherent and engaging debut with Beneath, a first full-length following up a 2017 self-titled EP release. Spacious guitar leads the way through the three-minute intro “Ab Initio” and into the subsequent “Green Fire,” giving a patient launch to the outing, the ensuing four songs of which grow shorter as they go behind that nine-minute “Green Fire” stretch. There’s room for ambience and intensity both in centerpiece “Eclipse,” with vocals echoing out over the building second half, and both “Mirrors” and “Grey” offer their moments of surge as well, the latter tapping into a roll that should have fans of Forming the Void nodding both to the groove and in general approval. Effectively tipping the balance in their sound over the course of the album as a whole, Tremor Ama showcase an all-the-more thoughtful approach in this debut, and at 30 minutes, they still get out well ahead of feeling overly indulgent or losing sight of their overarching mission.
Delivered on multiple formats including as a 12″ vinyl through Regain Records offshoot Helter Skelter Productions, the bleary cultistry of The Crooked Whispers‘ two-songer Dead Moon Night also finds the Los Angeles-based outfit recently picked up by Ripple Music. If it seems everybody wants a piece of The Crooked Whispers, that’s fair enough for the blend of murk, sludge and charred devil worship the foursome offer with “Hail Darkness” and the even more gruesome “Galaxy of Terror,” taking the garage-doom rawness of Uncle Acid and setting against a less Beatlesian backdrop, trading pop hooks for classic doom riffing on the second track, flourishing in its misery as it is. At just 11 minutes long — that’s less than a minute for each inch of the vinyl! — Dead Moon Night is a grim forecast of things to come for the band’s deathly revelry, already showcased too on last year’s debut, Satanic Whispers (review here).
Schooled, oldschool doom rock for denim-clad heads as foggy as the distortion they present, No Stone‘s debut album, Road into the Darkness, sounds like they already got there. The Rosario, Argentina, trio tap into some Uncle Acid-style garage doom vibes on “The Frayed Endings,” but the crash is harder, and the later 10-minute title-track delves deeper into psychedelia and grunge in kind, resulting in an overarching spirit that’s too weird to be anything but individual, however mmuch it might still firmly reside within the tenets of “cult.” If you were the type to chase down a patch, you might want to chase down a No Stone patch, as “Devil Behind” makes its barebones production feel like an aesthetic choice to offset the boogie to come in “Shadow No More,” and from post-intro opener “Bewitched” to the long fade of “The Sky is Burning,” No Stone balance atmosphere and songcraft in such a way as to herald future progress along this morose path. Maybe they are just getting on the road into the darkness, but they seem to be bringing that darkness with them on the way.
Dead Icons is the sixth full-length from Brazilian psychedelic outfit Firefriend, and throughout its 10 songs and 44 minutes, the band proffer marked shoegaze-style chill and a sense of space, fuzzy and molten in “Hexagonal Mess,” more desert-hued in “Spin,” jangly and out for a march on “Ongoing Crash.” “Home or Exile” takes on that question with due reach, and “Waves” caps with organ alongside the languid guitar, but moments like “Tomorrow” are singular and gorgeous, and though “Three Dimensional Sound Glitch” and “666 Fifth Avenue” border on playful, there’s an overarching melancholy to the flow, as engaging as it is. In its longest pieces — “Tomorrow” (6:05) and “One Thousand Miles High” (5:08) — the “extra” time is well spent in extending the trio’s reach, and while it’s safe to assume that six self-recorded LPs later, Firefriend know what they want to do with their sound, that thing feels amorphous, fleeting, transient somehow here, like a moving target. That speaks to ongoing growth, and is just one of Dead Icons‘ many strengths.
Posted in Reviews on January 19th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Terry Gross, the person, is the host of the interview show Fresh Air on National Public Radio. It’s produced at WHYY in Philadelphia and syndicated through the NPR network of stations to over 600 outlets. It’s a very popular show, and Gross has a very particular way of exhaling while saying its title.
TerryGross, the band, hail from San Francisco (local station KQED) and are a three-piece featuring guitarist/vocalist Phil Manley (also Trans Am), bassist/vocalist Donny Newenhouse and drummer Phil Becker, who jam. Oh my goodness how they jam. And indeed, they do bring a breath of fresh air to the form of doing so. The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — is that since all three are part owners of El Studio, which is Spanish for… the studio, the band started as a way for them to test out equipment and have fun presumably during downtime when no one else was using the space. So coy. But my, they do jam. A song tracked in late 2016 surfaced the next year and that was it until a series of lockdown jams appeared across months in 2020, reportedly mined from years’ worth of recordings.
These ultimately make a procession leading toward Terry Gross‘ Thrill Jockey-issued debut full-length, Soft Opening. At a manageable 38 minutes, the LP brings together three songs that work off impulses from heavy psychedelic expanse à la Earthless to sunnier West Coast skate vibes and an underlying touch of noise rock gone melodic that only adds to the energy and chemistry to rampantly on display. Two extended pieces, opener and longest cut (immediate points) “Space Voyage Mission” (19:21) and “Worm Gear” (13:32) make up the bulk of the outing, and side B rounds out with the shorter “Specificity (Or What Have You)” (5:55), which condenses the pairing of instrumentalist sprawl and structured verses that the first two tracks make.
“Space Voyage Mission” launches duly cosmic, with Becker working subtle jazz on the snare while Manley trips out and Newenhouse channels the motorik across the first five-plus minutes. There’s a trip-out on effects while the drums still move behind, but the whole thing feels more consumed as they move toward the seven-minute mark. Then Becker stops the drums and Manley introduces ‘the Riff.’ Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum dum dum. Newenhouse teases bass entry twice before actually coming in with the drums, and the band launch the first harmonized verse like surf-grunge, but that riff is pure West Coast noise, even if much-transposed onto what Terry Gross want it to be. A guitar solo stretches out over what’s quickly become the central rhythm, and they give that groove its due for the next few minutes until the next comedown signals a change to come.
Once more, it’s an excursion into effects driving the gradual-then-sudden change, and you can’t quite hear the pedal click at 11:42, but it’s there as the guitar thickens and surges forward with drums for propulsion behind it. A quick few lines of vocals from Manley and Newenhouse and then Terry Gross are off into improvised-sounding space-psych revelry, eschewing prog-tinged indulgences while remaining exploratory in vibe and hypnotic in spirit, looping rhythm and lead stretches as they weave into, out of and back into a fade before capping with just the lead, looped, on a long fade. Side A, accomplished.
On the most basic level, “Worm Gear” works similarly. There’s a long instrumental opening that gives way to standout riffage and righteous vocals, then much soloing and feeling-of-way-through the finish. But the structure is different, the beginning stretch longer, the ending stretch shorter, and the mood is different as well, with fiercer distortion and play on tempo evoking doom without ever really tipping over into it beyond a basic sense of lumber. Less devotedly space rock than “Space Voyage Mission,” if one thinks of a worm digging in dirt, then the earthbound, grittier nature of “Worm Gear” should make sense. As with the opener, roots in punk and noise are signaled through the underlying groove, but Terry Gross have changed the central ideology of these things and reshaped them into what they want them to be.
The slowdown — blessings and peace upon it — follows a change first signaled by Newenhouse in drawing out the bassline. They get loud, then crash out and between 9:15 and 9:20 move into a purely Sabbathian riff that’s not meant to be anything more than that, but of course is. Vocal echo adds to the largesse before the guitar takes off on a solo with the bass mirroring its melody and the drums holding down the drawn-out flow, and by the time they’re through that — the vocals there, then gone — the willfully filth-coated distortion is locked in and the overarching nod is brought to full, crashing fruition like a dust storm in your brain that suddenly disappears.
That leaves just the sub-six-minute “Specificity (Or What Have You)” to begin with a dogwhistle of intent in the drum tension moving behind the initially shimmering guitar that first subsides as the winding bassline comes into focus, then returns in thicker-toned declaration. They’re not two minutes in before Manley and Newenhouse are together on vocals in what’s inarguably the most straightforward verse/hook on Soft Opening, turning to cosmic grunge via effects and the consistent shove of Becker‘s drum progression. Just when you think they’re going to go far out for the remainder, the voices return and a chorus of sorts emerges, and that’s carried into a finish in a way that’s plotted but still feels organic.
Well, the gear works.
So does the band.
Soft Opening — as opposed to a “grand opening” — functions with the chemistry between Manley, Newenhouse and Becker at its core. These three are obviously not strangers to each other and have clearly honed their instrumental conversation to a point where one element plays off the others — be it the guitar, bass or drums — in such a way as to bolster all three. Entirely possible that Soft Opening is a one-off and it’s however many years before Terry Gross do another record, if they ever do, or it might be three months before the next round of sung-over jams is brought to bear. Either way, the work they’ve done in these three tracks refreshes familiar turns with a sense of personality and finds its niche in the spaces between genre even as it pulls from different aspects thereof.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 12th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Plankton Wat, aka DeweyMahood, formerly of Eternal Tapestry, has been putting out solo psychedelic instrumental offerings for the better part of 20 years, and noting that is my clever, ears-to-the-ground-always-on-the-ball-never-miss-a-thing way of telling you his work is new to me. The umpteenth Plankton Wat LP, dubbed Future Times, is set to release on Feb. 26 through Thrill Jockey, and if the advance-posted track “Nightfall” (at the bottom of the post) doesn’t hit you immediately, don’t fret and don’t give up on it. Give it another go. It might take that second time for the vibe to really set in, but there’s a soothing aspect to it that, once it comes through, is righteously affecting. I dig it, so I’m posting about it.
Preorders are up if you’re the type to get stuff done in advance. And if so, cheers on that. Some of us are always playing catchup.
From the PR wire:
Contemporary psych explorer Plankton Wat (Dewey Mahood, ex-Eternal Tapestry) announces new album Future Times due out February 26th, 2021
Future Times elevates Mahood’s psychedelic instrumentals to higher planes, finding hope in the turbulent events of 2020 and drawing strength from the natural world
One of the most prolific and inventive guitarists in the contemporary psychedelic underground, Portland multi-instrumentalist Dewey Mahood has announced his latest solo album as Plankton Wat, Future Times, due out February 26th. First single “Nightfall” sees Mahood sculpt a cinematic, new psychedelic and beautiful pastorale, building from distorted guitar figures and smouldering synthesizer drones to peaks of lysergic bliss.
Mahood’s music exists in constant communion with nature. From acclaimed albums with heavy-psych mainstays Eternal Tapestry to his prolific solo excursions, Mahood’s work has always been defined by his restless exploratory spirit and reverence for the environment. As Plankton Wat, his expressionist compositions exude a supernatural grace and patience, reflecting the resplendent beauty and mythical energy of the West Coast’s wild places. Mahood’s masterful and distinct guitarwork consistently blurs the confines of the instrument, at once texturally and melodically rich. Future Times elevates Mahood’s psychedelic instrumentals to new planes, encompass both the wild, seeking energy of free-improvisation and the deliberate arrangements of more traditional composition.
Plankton Wat – Future Times tracklist 1. The Burning World 2. Nightfall 3. Modern Ruins 4. Dark Cities 5. Teenage Daydream 6. Sanctuary 7. Future Times 8. Defund The Police 9. Wind Mountain
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 9th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
See? This is what Thrill Jockey does. Here’s some other fucking awesome band with some other fucking really cool sounding release and then blah blah blah there’s an album and it’s gonna be awesome and here’s a song and it’s awesome and it’s just one more awesome thing and wow I guess your life is just better now because of all this awesome shit right? I mean seriously. What gives?
Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Some of us are out here working really hard at being miserable bastards, day in and day fucking out, and then here comes a band named Terry Gross after a fucking NPR host and the song is like spacey and jammed out but still has this core of songwriting and it’s really good and makes you want to hear more and then all of a sudden you realize you’re like interested in life and stuff and maybe even a little inspired by it to not be such a shit 24 hours a day seven days a week and then things just get better because it’s all really just a matter of perspective anyway and maybe you’re just tired and you need a nap or to hydrate or maybe you just fucking have low blood sugar or something and it’s not that bad and maybe the nap works and then the song’s still good and whatever fuck you okay fine life is great alright everything’s beautiful. Fine. Fine.
PR wire:
Acclaimed guitarist/vocalist Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach) leads new Bay Area trio Terry Gross
Terry Gross’ debut full-length Soft Opening Out on Jan. 29th, 2021
Terry Gross is an engrossing trio composed of guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am), bassist Donny Newenhouse, and drummer Phil Becker. The trio are also connected as owners and engineers at Bay Area recording spot El Studio, where they began improvising together as a way to test the boundaries and gear of the studio. Their loose, organic chemistry burgeoned into a deep camaraderie and a sound both expansive and exacting. The three experienced musicians crafted their first full-length album through the pure joy of playing together with no expectations. With the tapes rolling on their rehearsals, the band captures the exuberance of live performance and elevates those recordings through a deft use of the studio as their collective instrument. On their debut LP Soft Opening, Terry Gross channels their cosmic powers and considerable chops into a gleefully mesmerizing odyssey fit for an arena.
Soft Opening took shape over the course of 2016-2019, with Terry Gross writing and refining their songs. “Space Voyage Mission” and “Worm Gear” parallel one another as sinuous jams that pulse with adamantine fervor. Each mountainous epic churns spellbinding repetition and simplicity into dizzying gallops that take hairpin turns into sinewy riffing and elysian vocal melodies. Phil Manley’s guitar takes on a constellation of tones across “Space Voyage Mission” with drifting delays soaring over the Newenhouse and Becker’s driving rhythm section which all succumb to frothing overdrives that spin the song into entirely new pastures. The hypnotic throb of “Worm Gear” grows all the more enchanting as Newenhouse and Becker add subtle shifts to the single-chord barrage. “Specificity (Or What Have You)” contrasts these two in its more traditionally pop-oriented structure while retaining its predecessors wide-eyed energy and delves further into the album’s lighthearted-yet-earnest take on sci-fi tropes from space and time travel to the singularity.
As Terry Gross, Phil Manley, Donny Newenhouse, and Phil Becker are sonic scientists traversing the borderlands of rock. Soft Opening captures the simple joy of a no-holds-barred trio in stunning detail, transporting the listener into the splendor and freedom of rock.
1. Space Voyage Mission 2. Worm Gear 3. Specificity (Or What Have You)
Terry Gross are: Phil Becker – Drums Phil Manley – Guitar/Vocals Donny Newenhouse – Bass/Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 4th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Kind of astonishing how much Emil Amos‘ work remains his own. That is to say, he’s known for Grails and for playing drums in Om, but Holy Sons is his in a way that neither of those outfits could be, and his utter mastery of songwriting is on display throughout the forthcoming Raw and Disfigured — due Oct. 30 on Thrill Jockey. You can hear it in “Lady of the Hour,” streaming below. Sure, he gets adventurous with arrangements a but — it’s a double-album, you’d better hope he does — and he has a few friends helping out along the way, but it’s right there. It’s the song. The song is the primary factor in what’s happening. It’s a song by a songwriter who sat down to write a song. If you think that notion is either simple or not beautiful, you are mistaken.
The album details are copious, but at its heart, Raw and Disfigured is a collection of these songs, with both an intimacy and a breadth that is the mark of what Amos brings to this outlet.
From the PR wire:
Holy Sons announces panoramic new double album Raw and Disfigured Out on Oct. 30th, 2020
Holy Sons, the project of multi-instrumentalist and singer Emil Amos, has announced the ambitious, panoramic double album Raw and Disfigured, out Oct. 30th. Along with the announcement, Holy Sons has shared the album’s first single “Lady of the Hour”, a vista of sweeping pastoral layers and melodies that grasp towards hope rather than resignation.
Under the name Holy Sons, as well as with bands Om, Grails, and Lilacs and Champagne, Amos harnesses boundless sonic textures to embellish delicately crafted songs. His music balances cues from classic and indie rock traditions with a tenderness and sense of foreboding through unparalleled artistry. Raw and Disfigured showcases Amos’ mastery of songcraft through a seemingly impossible combination of subtle yet potent gestures, bold arrangements and resolute vulnerability resulting in songs as beautiful as they are crushing.
The recording of Raw and Disfigured took place largely at Sonic Youth’s studio Echo Canyon West. Amos, who plays the bulk of the instruments and sings the majority of the vocals throughout the album, is joined on a few pieces by drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), as well as album and WFMU in-house engineer Ernie Indradat.
The album draws thematically from the archetypal tale of Quasimodo and classic ghost story imagery to illustrate the “hero’s journey” in the time of a coming apocalypse. From the opening swells, Amos creates a sense of mystery and tension. Melodic sections pierce through the thick fogs of unease with gliding choral harmonies and guitar lines. Rich vocals draw you into an exotic atmosphere of mystical musical sounds, while classic lilting guitar lines entice you further. Raw and Disfigured proves the enduring power of the rock ballad without dwelling on the nostalgic tropes. The ballads of Holy Sons are ballads for these dark times.
Raw & Disfigured tracklist: 1. The Loser that Always Wins 2. Lady of the Hour 3. Cast Bound King 4. Hand that Feeds 5. Permanent Things 6. Four Walls 7. Held the Hand 8. Lost in the Fire 9. Transformation 10. Slow to Run 11. Reach Out and Touch Something 12. Cóiste Bodhar 13. Nights Like This 14. Up on that Hill 15. Backslider’s Wine 16. Bloody Strings
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 14th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
I could live a thousand years and never be cool enough to have my opinion about a Sumac record mean jack shit to anyone. Their albums have gotten such a mountainous slosh of press hyperbole that really anything I have to say just adds to the laudatory din. If I’m like, “Hey, this Sumac record is pretty good,” in a forest, do the trees appreciate the insight? No, because they’ve all been cut down to make the fancy glossy magazines that have doused superlatives on the band since their inception. I’ll be lucky if I get to hear it before it’s released.
I dig Sumac though, and the records earn that cloying cred, so I’ll still likely find some way to write about May You Be Held. I’ve Quarterly Reviewed their other LPs, so yeah, that seems about right. Enough space to say, “Golly this is important and forward thinking,” without going on too long and making an ass out of myself. To myself.
Be informed:
SUMAC announce sprawling new album May You Be Held Out on Sept. 18th, 2020
Expressionistic metal ensemble SUMAC have announced their new album, May You Be Held, out September 18th. Picking up where the band left off with 2018’s critically acclaimed Love in Shadow, the trio of Aaron Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom), Brian Cook (Russian Circles), and Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) push further into the extreme polarity of their sound with their latest collection of long-form composition and free-form exploration. Meticulously detailed and complex one moment, rudimentary and repetitive the next, and completely untethered and unscripted at seemingly random intervals—May You Be Held is an album that fluctuates between extreme discipline and control on one end and an almost feral energy on the other.
“As an artist in this time of significant upheaval, society seemingly having reached the end of its current iteration, it’s of critical importance to absorb and interpret this process of dissolution – and of the transformation that hopefully follows it” says Turner. “While I don’t believe we’re on the brink of collective destruction precisely now, this is clearly a pivotal stage in the story of humankind – and there is something that feels right about this music at this exact and very uncertain moment.”
SUMAC’s work has always been about transition between different states of being. Our sense of normal, and indeed our sense of life, is now being shaken. We don’t know what is coming next. We are looking for pointers towards the future, as well as things to hold onto in the moment. This is a fundamental aspect of May You Be Held’s larger theme. Musically, it’s about continual unification and divergence, and is imbued with the uncertainty inherent in that cycle. In that uncertainty there is also hope, frustration, madness, and a desire for connection. All this too is part of this moment in our history—everything happening at once, the simultaneous emergence of humanity’s best and worst characteristics. Lyrically, May You Be Held follows the humanistic themes explored on Love in Shadow, partially informed by Turner’s navigation of fatherhood and family life. “It’s clear humans have figured out many ways over the centuries to acclimate to adverse circumstances, and even to thrive in them,” Turner says. “My hope for our family, humanity and future generations, is that we find our way by doing what we have always done—invent, adapt, band together, and ideally, hold each other up through love and kindness.”
May You Be Held was recorded throughout 2017, 2018 and 2019 by Kurt Ballou at Robert Lang Studios, Matt Bayles at The Unknown, and at House of Low Culture.
SUMAC – May You Be Held tracklist: 1. A Prayer for Your Path 2. May You Be Held 3. The Iron Chair 4. Consumed 5. Laughter and Silence
