Dos

So hands up all those who thought that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were as cool as it got? They try hard at it anyway. There are not many who can pull off leather, shades and casual cool in the summer time as easily as the BRMC. Well sorry to say guys, but here come Wooden Shjips and this rather excellent album. And man, are these guys cool. Proper cool. Not like ice cubes, more like icebergs. Huge.

American, naturally. San Francisco, equally so. Where else produces effective minimalist psychedelic garage rock? Nowhere really. Maybe corners of the UK. Maybe. It all kicks off with ‘Motorbike’ (is this in homage possibly to the aforementioned BRMC?). It sounds like Suicide and Spacemen 3; a tad dreary, druggy, a cyclone of quivering vocals and galactic guitar vibes. It’s very hypnotic. Very charming. It delivers a nice slice of greasy rock and follows with another; ‘For So Long’ a stirring languid number featuring a bass line full of foreboding danger; the song equivalent of the exotic foreign hooker beckoning to a drunk punter with the motion of one finger knowing she owns him and everything about him for that moment in time. 

From ‘Down By The Sea,’ the pace picks up. This track, coming in at eleven minutes, heralds a change in the album. After the fuzzy first numbers, and this epic, come the two scene stealers ‘Aquarian Time’ and ‘Fallin.’ LSD must feature in this band’s lifestyle. It must. ‘Aquarian Time’ bobs along in a panicky fashion that only acid could fathom. There’s enough seduction here to draw Icarus right back into the sun a second time. The fifth and last track, ‘Fallin,’ is the poppist moment and shakes and rolls for eleven minutes. But it’s masterly, every second of it. The organ bumps and hustles in and out helping to circulate the guitars and drums in wonderful patterns.

It’s an effortless display. The clatter and punch backbone lying in the arms of the repetitive drum and bass brings the Velvet Underground to mind. All this while the guitars are surging like whales coming up for air only to dip straight back down out of sight again. And in all, it is easy to album to admire. Downsides? Well, it is perhaps too short and possibly too dreary at the beginning for those with no patience but for others, you will be rewarded.