No Doctors
Origin & Tectonics
Self Released
By Jose Fritz
This is a changed band. On their 2003 record Hunting Season, the guitars squawk, screech, squeal, fuzz, feedback and wail, and never condescend to the mission of clean notes. The drums pounded out simple rhythms underneath drug-addled, self-indulgent guitar solos consisting of random noises and distorted fret runs. The word experimental didn’t cut it. If you’ve ever heard the three LP set Woodstock, you may have caught a snippet of the stage announcements regarding the brown acid. Nothing less will excuse this record for the depraved crime of being what it is. I need a synonym for this entire paragraph.
“…the brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. Uh, it's suggested that you do stay away from that, course it's your own trip, so be my guest, but, uh, please be advised that there is a warning on that one ok?”
This time inside the chaos there is compromise. They are all in fact playing the same song at the same time. That requires certain concessions like a mutually agreed upon rhythm, time signature, key and some basic structure. These are not jams. They have passed whatever obstacle was afflicting them in the past.
They’ve moved on from the infantile whippets and juvenile gas huffing of the past to performance enhancing pharmaceuticals like Vasopressin, Adderall and Modafinil. Their minds are sharper, faster and more able to evade the hallucinatory mantraps that come with the acid flash backs. The USOC, the U.S. Surgeons General and the Dean of Franciscan University might have a problem with that, but I don’t. I’m pragmatic with my musicians. It’s easy to compartmentalize ethics when it’s not in your living room.
They’ve slowed down the songs, refocused on composition in a way I’d previously thought beyond their ability. They gracefully apply dissonant horns to build delicate tension it’s not for the gestalt it’s for meaning. Pianos, gongs, and glockenspiels go places that 3 years ago they’d have needed maps to find. Songs like “Yerba Buena”, and “Turning the Sundial” have gone past the mile markers that Raccoooooon and Barry Burst left behind them. They wander out past that, into that strange arena where nameless psyche-rock bands of the 1970s live on unsold white label test-press 45s sitting in stolen milk crates under the worn folding tables of the WFMU record fair. See you there.
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