Review & Full Album Premiere: Yawning Balch, Volume Two
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on November 2nd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Yawning Balch’s Volume Two in its entirety. Album is out tomorrow, Nov. 3, on Heavy Psych Sounds with preorders here for North America and here for Europe.]
Volume Two picks up more or less where earlier 2023’s Volume One (review here) left off, fading in around Bill Stinson‘s drums with an immediately spacious wash of tone, guitarists Gary Arce and Bob Balch setting out intertwining lines of the reverberating, resonant drift that will in no small part define the three-songer’s 42-minute course while bassist Billy Cordell adds melancholia to the melody and fleshes out the punctuation of the toms in the early going of “A Moment Expanded (A Form Constant).” Like its predecessor, Volume Two presents its component material without fanfare.
That fade in is what you get and before you know it, you, the four-piece — which is Bob Balch of Fu Manchu, Sun and Sail Club, Slower, Big Scenic Nowhere (who also have a new one coming), etc., and I think the second-to-latest incarnation of Yawning Man, of course founded by Arce — are fully engrossed in the jam. The spirit of the jam, its fluidity and the trajectory it takes, maybe consciously, maybe not, as it unfurls its extended 18:37 run as both opener and longest track (immediate points), backed in soul and chemistry by “Flesh of the Gods” (9:59) and “Psychic Aloha” (13:36) on side B, which are no less dynamic in their execution.
The narrative of Yawning Balch reminds of old jazz collabs. You get Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in a room together and see what happens; two players of a different style putting themselves in a position to complement and inspire each other. To be sure, Balch and Arce are each their own guitarist, but even more than the work they do together as part of Big Scenic Nowhere, the melding of their methods is highlighted in Yawning Balch in part because of the shape of the pieces themselves. Big Scenic Nowhere is also an expansive heavy psych foursome, and yes, there’s more than a bit in common between the two, but these are jams and those are songs and the intention is distinct.
As one might expect, Yawning Balch also has a fair bit shared aesthetically with Yawning Man at their longformiest, but is apart enough from that too to be its own thing and given its direction in part by Balch‘s post-recording editing and mixing. There won’t be many surprises in Volume Two for anyone those who heard Volume One — the two were tracked at the same time — but if you told me that the ending of “A Moment Expanded (A Form Constant)” was the impetus for releasing these explorations in the first place, I wouldn’t argue with the choice.
I’m pretty sure if Yawning Balch took Volume One and Volume Two and posted them on YouTube as ‘Chill Music to Study (2024)’ or somesuch algorithm-manipulating nonsense, they’d have enough views to make Stoned Jesus blush, but either way, the three inclusions flow within themselves and between each other with a grace made all the more palpable through a relaxed pace. “Flesh of the Gods” is a meditation, fading up around a movement already in progress but with which it’s no struggle to get on board. Cordell being the secret weapon here as bass always is in Yawning Man, the warmth beneath the alternately soaring and noodling guitars isn’t to be understated in the overarching impression Yawning Balch make, never quite mellowed to a point of shoegaze. Maybe looking up instead. Sungazer psychedelia. Don’t look too long or you’ll burn your eyes.
Whether or not they’re communing with immortals, “Flesh of the Gods” unfolds patiently in its atmospheric course, riding its central groove for the duration and marking out its breadth around that. As with the cuts preceding and following, it is gorgeous, and even more than the leadoff, it feels representative of the band’s time in the studio together. One imagines that, as Balch sat down with the recordings, there were a few stretches like “Flesh of the Gods,” which even as the shortest song on Volume Two seems to dig deep into its procession, the wash of effects and lead guitar floating but not completely amorphous with the cycling measures pointed out by the bass and drums.
It might be a test of who gets it and who doesn’t — if you can go with it, “Flesh of the Gods” is easy listening; if you’re the type to lose patience with a group exploring around the same progression for 10 minutes, it’s another story — but the ambience is only inviting, and the last crash and transitional drift into the quiet guitar that starts “Psychic Aloha” is another showcase of the underlying consideration put into how this material, which is about as barebones as you get in terms of traditional songwriting development, but that is nonetheless purposeful and thoughtful in its delivery.
As the final track from the sessions that produced both of the project’s LPs to date — and there may be more to come or not, I don’t know — “Psychic Aloha” is duly serene, with a languid but not lazy beat snapping on the twos and fours while wisps of synth or effects (the latter, likely) push into a kind of cosmic desert wash with a more definitive fuzzy strum arriving after the five-minute mark to anchor and guide the not-quite-a-march-but-neither-just-a-casual-stroll into the ensuing crescendo, which maintains the methodical pace while spreading out across a vaster shimmering wash from the guitar.
True to both the first album and the general expectation going into that and coming out of this — that is, it’s something completely reasonable and I’m not complaining about it; I’m big on tonal clarity in multiple contexts — Yawning Balch and Big Scenic Nowhere share much from having the Arce/Balch collaboration at their root. That’s probably inevitable, especially as both are relatively new (within the last five or six years; less than that here) projects and haven’t yet had the chance to fully manifest the distinctions between them, but already and bolstered further by Volume Two it’s clear that each resides in its own space with its respective goals. How Yawning Balch might develop, if they keep going at all — I’ll argue there’s more to be said (instrumentally) — is a less predictable and more exciting prospect for that, as from the six pieces they’ve thus far unveiled there’s really nowhere that seems off limits.
Yawning Balch, Volume One (2023)
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