Chris Daly has never seen a tab he doesn’t like.
Look, we’ve all been there before: Having successfully crushed your enemies, seen them driven before you and heard the lamentations of their women, you opt to celebrate more so than usual, taking what your “friend” describes to you as an “ayahuasca enema,” even though you grow more and more convinced it’s actually paint thinner and the strongest dose of LSD you’ve ever put into your body. The next thing you knew, you’re eating colors while your hands morph into giant flyswatters as the stars above begin to swirl in some obviously great cosmic dance whose steps are beginning to become clear.
That’s simply a tale as old as time, so clichéd I’m almost embarrassed to commit it to paper. The good news is, thanks to the latest brain child of recluse savant desert dweller Clutchy Hopkins (or the amazingly detailed, yet too-bizarre-to-be-true nom de plume of such speculated names as DOOM to Madlib) & LA multi-instrumentalist/composer/producer Fat Albert Einstein, you now have the perfect soundtrack for your next such adventure.
Not quite hitting the shamanistic excesses of Sun Araw, Clutchy and Fatty nonetheless conjure an acid-drenched wasted land with their latest, high desert low tide. An amalgam of live and electronic instrumentation, the diethylamide duo take listeners on a trippy trip through the California barrens they call home, literally and/or spiritually, depending on whose bio you believe. Dry and dusty paranoia ooze through the tracks, a nightmarish drive through bat-infested territory. These are funk infused psych-folk jams similar in nature—if not spirit—to Tobacco’s best solo stuff, but more accessible; let’s consider it higher quality blotter. Not necessarily better, mind you, just cleaner.
Opener “Mojave Dervish” sets the tone, pipes and hand drums giving way to pulsating keys and bass—a pretty good interpretation of the moment you know that the shit you ingested was, indeed, some of the good stuff. “Zero G’s” brings the first of many visits from a near perfect brass section, and their return on “Double Dribble” is the updated Morphine (the band, though quite possibly the drug, too) hit you didn’t know you were missing. The album stand-out, however, just might be, “Nightshade,” a high plains ditty replete with sultry strings and various other instruments that speak of far off lands (plus, those HORNS again!). Perfect music for those on late night drives through No Man’s Land either losing and/or finding their minds.
