Genre : Indie,Rock,Folk,Psychedelic
Myspace
Record Label: Lovitt Release Date: July 29, 2008
Tracklist
1. Asphalt
2. No Feeling
3. Dead Don't Pass
4. God Condition
5. Red Room Blues
6. Mount Hope
7. Frozen Man
8. Hard To Swallow
9. Concrete Mountain
10. Butch's Dream
11. Dreams Are Class
12. Tumor
Even before you’ve heard a note of Pygmy Lush’s astonishing Mount Hope, you should notice how directly and intentionally opposite its name is from last year’s Bitter River. And, using your detective skills, you ought to be able to figure out that the group has chosen a slightly new direction for their music. Don’t worry - the guys haven’t packed up their knack for striking a raw nerve and converted to contemporary Christian rock, but they have shed some skin as far as pace and aggression are concerned. Here the guys have settled into their folkier, almost comatose songwriting impulses with no random bursts of pg99 or Blood Brothers to offset the trance that they know so well how to conduct.
Although the variety of Bitter River was my initial attention-getter in discovering the band, I was not at all let down by the newer more direct sound. Trust me – it’s still plenty weird. “Butch’s Dream” ventures into rockabilly territory (although it’s the creepiest rockabilly you’ll ever hear of course). It’s a little bit like Bitter River’s “Throw the Jockey” except more serious, like the group’s mindset had changed from “What if” to “This is what we do.”
Songs like “Asphalt” remind you just how powerful simple music can be. The track is a really bleak choice as an opener, but about 99% of Pygmy Lush’s songs would have the same effect so I guess there’s really no point in considering sequential order. But “Asphalt” in particular is the kind of song that will make you pick up your guitar and make your own stay-in-your-room-forever ballads.
Simplicity is the key throughout the whole album. There’s nothing flashy to contrast the slow-driving arpeggios and lightly strummed guitars, not on this disc. On Bitter River, the group must have felt like they had something to prove by shoving bombastic punk tunes into the tracklist - they wanted to show that they still could. But here they’re comfortable enough with their direction that there’s no need for any of that stuff... it just is what it is. And it is awesome.
You can definitely still tell that this is folk rock in the hands of people who’ve played other genres (by which I mean it’s willfully unauthentic), but Pygmy Lush’s movement into purely reflective music was pretty logical and the music is well done. The album does not find the group moving in a hopeful direction – their Myspace tagline remains “Slurp Shit and Die” – but the guys have trimmed the directionlessness to a minimum, focusing their songwriting and taking one step closer toward “classifiable music.”
Although the variety of Bitter River was my initial attention-getter in discovering the band, I was not at all let down by the newer more direct sound. Trust me – it’s still plenty weird. “Butch’s Dream” ventures into rockabilly territory (although it’s the creepiest rockabilly you’ll ever hear of course). It’s a little bit like Bitter River’s “Throw the Jockey” except more serious, like the group’s mindset had changed from “What if” to “This is what we do.”
Songs like “Asphalt” remind you just how powerful simple music can be. The track is a really bleak choice as an opener, but about 99% of Pygmy Lush’s songs would have the same effect so I guess there’s really no point in considering sequential order. But “Asphalt” in particular is the kind of song that will make you pick up your guitar and make your own stay-in-your-room-forever ballads.Simplicity is the key throughout the whole album. There’s nothing flashy to contrast the slow-driving arpeggios and lightly strummed guitars, not on this disc. On Bitter River, the group must have felt like they had something to prove by shoving bombastic punk tunes into the tracklist - they wanted to show that they still could. But here they’re comfortable enough with their direction that there’s no need for any of that stuff... it just is what it is. And it is awesome.
You can definitely still tell that this is folk rock in the hands of people who’ve played other genres (by which I mean it’s willfully unauthentic), but Pygmy Lush’s movement into purely reflective music was pretty logical and the music is well done. The album does not find the group moving in a hopeful direction – their Myspace tagline remains “Slurp Shit and Die” – but the guys have trimmed the directionlessness to a minimum, focusing their songwriting and taking one step closer toward “classifiable music.”
No comments:
Post a Comment