++ALBUM++ review by Richard S Jones
Richard S Jones has his brain melted by the psychedelic charm of Wooden Shjips on this, their first collection of rare releases. Beware all ye who enter here...
When Wooden Ships released a handful of limited edition singles last year, they quickly became either painfully obsolete or stored under lock and key by devout vinyl enthusiasts.
The San Francisco band are a timeless anomaly amidst the common influx of lacklustre artists currently alphabetised on the shelves of high street record stores.
"it rumbles like a flight of attack aircrafts, with guitars trading feedback for napalm..."
This release by definition isn’t a new album; it's skeleton featuring cover clearly states that it's a singles compilation. But since Wooden Shjips are so embalmed in their influences (which range from avant garde to garage rock), it’s no mistake that this LP sounds like a well-planned concept.
It's only fair that the record kicks off with ‘Shrinking Moon’, given that the original release is now something of an unobtainable obscurity. In the same way dead stars form black holes from cosmic singularities, it nearly implodes before it begins.
Thereafter the flood gates open, with the heavy psych shake of ‘Space Clothes’ and into ‘Clouds Over Earthquake’. The latter rumbles like a flight of attack aircrafts, with guitars trading healthy doses of feedback for deadly napalm gas.
Even on ‘SOL ’07’, the most melodically finite song on the collection, the band feel ready to lapse into arrest at any time. The only thing keeping it in constant check is the rhythm section, a crude pacemaker fashioned from a broken wah pedal and a half smoked pack of cigarettes.
All these songs are pushed to the point of nothingness, on journeys that roll along seemingly ad infinitum. And now they are no longer rare, basically, they are six of the finest cuts of psych you’ll hear this side of forever.
++ Richard S Jones ++
Artrocker rating: 5
The newest sounds as heard in the Artrocker Office and our Resonance FM podcast.
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