It’s not always monster guitars and stomping disco beats at 20JFG towers, nah, nah, sometimes I wake up in the morning and each tiny spec of dust floating in the smokey air of my chamber is a little sharp blade cutting the skin and making my soul bleed, oh lord it hurts. Those days which are a collection of avalanches waiting to bury me, then I scratch my chin bewildered, sometimes a little melody can be salvation.

Don’t fool yourself, music won’t take the pain away…but a sweet tune can make everything mellower, turn angst into a cushion of dead flowers on top of which I can lean my head, breath deep, it’s almost comfortable down there…

If I had to choose one that has done the trick throughout the years, it would have to be ‘Confusion is Nothing New’, which kind of starts the Beachwood Sparks second album, ‘Once we Were Trees’, released in 2001 by Sub Pop.

I was lucky to see them playing live while they were still going on, they were the sweetest bunch of cowboy hippies ever to roam the dark forests of California in a Scooby Doo van while wasted on coffeine tablets, searching for the spirit of Gram Parsons, according to the legend if you find him, and ask the right question the right way he will grant you the gift of American Cosmic Music.

The Beachwood Sparks- Confusion is Nothing New

These guys surely got it, the layers of sound add up to a spell, come to think about it, not that different from My Bloody Valentine’s. If listening to that fragile slide guitar rising and descending like a butterfly to explode in something purer that the first snowstorm doesn’t break your heart but at the same time, somehow, puts it back together again, hey, I pity you cowboy.

As a bonus, here you have the title track that closes the album, a lament for nature that will shut up any heathen’s ‘you tree-huggers’ despicable muttering with a cataclismic finale of distorted droning ire, yeah, I saw these guys doing this on a stage, I was wasted, it was unforgettable, only in Benicassim.

The Beachwood Sparks- Once we were trees

Similarly psychedelically cosmically awesome is the new album by The Gris Gris, which goes by the name of ‘For the Season’ and has been released by those knowing folks at Birdman Records. The feel in this case is more of proper epic n full fledged open the bleeding doors of perception electric stoner folk freak out, if you catch my drift. There’s some serious prog magic going on here, they didn’t name their band after a particularly powerful type of voodoo for nothing, eh.

You can see that these guys are climbing towards a higher plane, you might not want to go there, still you can’t help but admire them.

The Gris Gris- Down with Jesus

Today we are posting one of the jauntiest, more down-to-earth, down with Jesus, hell yeah, numbers in the record,a gloriously reverb drenched sunny tune with a bit of a snake bite in the lyrics and enough guitars pyrotechnics at the end to keep the most demanding easy rider happy, there you go.

And down the dusty road walks your 20JFGster, still amazed he wrote ‘cataclismic finale of distorted droning ire’, what happened, aw, fuck it. See you later folks…

(while you’re at it, check out Noiseferatu, Felix is the coolest)

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with avalanches beachwood sparks bewildered choose one confusion is nothing new Cosmic dead flowers little melody nah nah once we were trees prog soul bleed spec of dust subpop sweet tune those days tiny spec