#eiderdown

If you’re just now trying to imagine how the Minutemen founder’s anarchic rock-punk-jazz bass would sound next to Heathen Shame/Nmperign’s heavily effected, free improv brass, you’ll likely envision something like “Ritual Gesticulation,” a 15-minute squall of agitated blare and abstract punctuations of bass.  It’s not just Watt and Kelley, though.  The piece is filled out with guitar from Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand’s Jeffrey Taylor, surging, sculptural percussion from his bandmate Mark Ostrowski and wild swoops and screams of viola from Noel Kennon.  It’s unhinged and exultant, and as close to jazz as this disc gets, while elsewhere it drifts closer to post-rock, no-wave and even experimental folk. 

For example, the opener, “Paradise or the Sea” has the oceanic heave and roll of early Dirty Three, its textures constructed from long, shape-shifting guitar tones (that’s Jeffrey Taylor of the Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand outfit mentioned above), Watt’s untethered bass lines, the wail of viola, the tumult of rumbling, clashing drums.  Clear guitar tones vibrate and morph, heard through the veil of wah wah, like the Stooge’s “Dirt” stretched out to the horizons 

That’s the post-rock-i-est cut, but “Rose of Shannon” veers in an entirely different direction, its pastoral, finger-picked guitar (though electric) sawed right through by the buzzing friction of Kelley on metal plate.  The languid sweep of viola, along with guitar, makes the prettiest and most song-shaped of these compositions, though it gets pretty wild towards the end.

The money cut, however, comes right at the end in “Be That As It May,” a furious propulsive jam, where the bass and drums tunnel through a white noise scree of sound. It’s a bop, by this disc’s standard, the one that would set a live audience into bobbing, thrashing motion, an experimental no wave jam that you could definitely feel in your gut. 

If all this sounds like it might be incohesive, you have clearly forgotten about the binding power of albumen.  This self-titled album flows from one idea to another, not afraid of striking out for new territory, but able to link them one to another indelibly.