There’s a Dylan Carlson–like Earthiness here, a grungy bristle, the rasping purr of the bass , counter-sunk percussion, all spiralling away on a singe of erosive geometries.
“Kali Yuga Blues” is a brilliant thing, something to be savoured, the sensual core of Isobel Sollenberger‘s voice calling from within the thicket, dusted in arterial-sprayed collusion and sliding flute. A sweet promise of the semi-seismic seductions that follow. The harmonic antenna of “Taste,” its lyrics entwined with nature, a wiccan sensibility relished by the cover art. A notion of hippidom that continues on “Fir” dispatched with a doomic swagger, its cross-cut currents kaleidoscoping a MBV-esque roughness, a certain sickle-stitched brightness.
Things teeter the volcano brilliantly, pull at you , but never claw with brazen savagery and your ears are left to shimmer with sensation. The folksy, blues concoction of “Chance,” holding check on its potential depths in a teased undulation of patchouli caught on the mist of some ethereal dawn, circles of fields and autumn leaves caravaning heels as the glue holding things together slowly dissolves, something “Before the Moon” imparts more succulently. A simple repetitive coda climbing and retracting between apparition-like lunges of vocals, comets that grasp towards some sky-trailing nirvana pinned to streamers of flute, Isobel moaning into the fizzing mixture “No yesterday/No tomorrow/Time is falling,” as if holding onto a dream that is already vanishing.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
