No strangers to outre guitar music (in act, they recorded an entire album with Fahey), Cul De Sac return following a 3 1/2-year absence with the weirdest release in their catalogue. Yawning violins, static electricity, chock-a-block tape loops, distant operatic voices from a scratchy, 70-year-old 78 RPM, and a Valco acoustic resonator guitar all fed through a food processor and served up as the blue-plate special called "Dust of Butterflies" signifies that Cul De Sac's seventh album is a directional sidestep from their traditional linear, guitar-based, Eastern-flavored, psychedelic krautrock. Newest member Jake Trussell's melodica even adds an eerie aura to the track, which ultimately is reminiscent of the pan-ethnic work of multi-instrumentalists Cerberus Shoal and the Magic Carpathian Project.
The pretentiousness of a title like "Bamboo Rockets, Half Lost in Nothingness, Searching For An Inch of Sky" is somewhat redeemed by Jones' meandering Coral sitar superimposed over ex-bassist Michael Bloom's Peruvian rainforest field recordings, although only percussive freaks will stay away from the skip button during Jon Proudman's 8-minute drum solo on "Turok, Son of Stone." I'm sorry, but nothing is more boring in this day and age than a drum solo. It was boring when Ginger Baker, Carl Palmer, Peter Criss, and the dueling Deadheads were doing it, and it's just as boring today.
The ethereal, nebulous "Bellevue Bridge," however, creates a haunting ambience where guitar and cymbol interplay (!) interlaced with Trussell's toy piano and Jones' field recordings of the actual Nebraska bridge itself create a marvelously exotic image of young kids playing on the bridge - perhaps diving, fishing, skimming stones, trainspotting, etc. Recapturing childhood innocence is the order of the day.
So for a musical Luddite like me, who shuns and quest-shuns tampering with perfection, I can't say I'm overexcited about this new direction. It's an interesting experiment, certainly an anomaly in their discography, and perhaps after eating six buckets of vanilla ice cream I'd be willing to give chocolate a try, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. With a soundtrack album due next, it will be a while before we see where Cul De Sac's sound progresses, so while not entirely successful, this release will plant a seed of curiosity in this listener's ear and certainly make their next regular release highly anticipated. That's not to imply this is totally without merit. Actually, the individual members mention in their liner notes that this was intentionally designed to keep them amused—to avoid being formulaic. I happen to like the formula they have established, placing them alongside SubArachnoid Space, Kinski, Paik, et al, as some of my favorite psychedelic guitar bands. But if you like bands that take chances, wonder what The Residents would sound like if they recorded psychedelic music instead of show tunes, are a fan of the Elephant 6 collective's quirky weirdness, and you believe "change is good," then this may be worthy of your attention.
|
