#meatbodies

Undertow is, possibly, the right metaphor, because by all reports, Ubovich fought the abyss to make this record—surviving the pandemic, mental instability, substance abuse, homelessness and an accident that left him unable to walk. He released 333 (“You could draw an upward slanting line from the disc’s snarling, disconsolate opening towards the mystic certainty that fills its later tracks, but the whole journey is worth taking,” said I in my 2021 review.) while still wrestling this material away from his demons. It is a sprawling, roaring, wild beast of an album, a double whose songs largely exceed the pop framework, rampaging forward five, six or seven minutes.

Even the disc’s most concise and lighthearted cuts lean into the gnostic. “Silly Cybin,” psychedelic on at least two counts, rides a catchy, boppy little tune about mushrooms into the whirlwind, amid blustery drums and spiraling, caterwauling guitars. “They Came Down” bristles with distortion, its main riff a dog chasing its tail in circles. But its chorus swaggers into stately view from there, not agitated at all but grand, anthemic and ritual. And “Move” judder to life on a dark echoey bass line, channeling the Wipers at their most apocalyptic, the Obits at their blues-torturing best.

It's all pretty intense, but like Segall, Ubovich looses dreamy psych meditations to float over turbulent distortion. Consider a shipwrecked sailor flailing through rough seas but glimpsing a brilliant sunset as he goes down. The struggle is all-consuming, but it opens out into brighter, freer, calmer vistas. In “The Assignment” slow booming bass riffs sound off amid snaggle-toothed guitar riffs and rolling explosions of drums. But the words dance without a care in an upper register untouched by conflict. “Wiggle your hips and sing all his songs,” Ubovich croons, way up high and there’s a party going on up there.

That, of course, sounds like Ty Segall and you can definitely trace the similarities. Still, this is a powerful piece of work, as serious about the trippy silliness as about the pitch and heave of amp overload. Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, like its title, is several things at once. It rocks like a hurricane, dreams like a lotus eater.