Continuing along the lysergic snail trail that was birthed
last week with the Wilder Gonzales Agreda release, here we’ve landed in an
American neo-psych boogie spiritualist mode with this new beast from DireWolves – who refer to themselves on this release as Dire Wolves (Just Exactly
Perfect Sisters Band). The roots of this
crew stretch way back into the 1990s.
Their subterranean tendrils originate both in the Darla Records sunshine
pop-psych-tronica zone – Brian Lucas was a member of the should-be-legendary
Mirza – and the equally ancient strange folk ways of The Iditarod, whose Jeffrey
Alexander has gone on to play with Black Forest/Black Sea, Jackie-O
Motherfucker and these Dire Wolves we’re speaking about. Their tunes sail within all of these
influential orbits as well as the various Kosmische rock and astral jazz landmarks
that have woven their way into the contemporary psychedelic streams of thought. It’s a sonic brew that’ll put you out, in the
best way possible!
Paradisiacal Mind
is a five-track epic from this San Francisco outfit, hitting all the high notes
mentioned previously, and leads off with a flavorful rock-n-roll creeper called
“Unfettered and Alive”. This relatively
short jam incorporates delicious stabs of violin and mysterious ghost vocals,
which fog up the already misty windows and leave us hungry for what’s next. “Just Live Your Life Behind Your Eyes” is a hazy
vision, one which evades being recognized at the outset, but which eventually
achieves clarity over its lengthy running time.
It’s a woven droner that takes off toward the heavens with a maddening energy.
“We Are Stardust” is a stream of proggy jazz that disappears
into a cavern of acoustic guitar and bizarre field recordings. The lysergic energy of 1970s Kosmische
out-rock is smeared all over “In and Out of Den Garten He Goes”, which is a swirling,
bleary-eyed maelstrom of madness that sets us up for the monumental psych rock blast
of the title track. Coming in at just
over seventeen minutes, this piece is the motherlode. It’s a folding together of all of Dire Wolves’
influences into a single, soaring epic that alone is worth the price of
admission.
I highly encourage sourcing out a copy of this maddening
slab of free-rock mania. You can score yourselves
the wax over at Cardinal Fuzz in the EU or at Feeding Tube in North America. However, if your preferred flavor is digital,
head on over to Bandcamp to reel in these cosmic sounds.
