Arrington de Dionyso and the Old Time Relijun - Varieties of Religious Experience
(K)
Arrington de Dionyso began Old Time Relijun, in a sense, by making four-track recordings for self-released cassettes. The formation of the band was necessitated by public demand for and a personal inclination towards fully realizing the material in a live setting. And though the band's original 1995 line-up is no longer intact, de Dionyso is the one constant in the group's output. And due both to his songwriting style and distinctive vocals, the band, no matter who's behind him, in inarguably Arrington's. Varieties of Religious Experience is what K distinctly deems a summarization of Arrington's output so far, mixing original four-track recordings with those made by the full group, even duplicating a good chunk of the material.
Part Bobcat Goldthwaite, part Froggy from Little Rascals and part gruff bluesman, de Dionyso's vocals are the facet of Old Time Relijun's music that easily come to the forefront. These are the sort of vocals that easily separate people into two camps and begin internet message board arguments, but the music on this disc doesn't live or die strictly upon Arrington's vocals. The loose, rollicking music that backs Arrington deserves equal attention, whether on the solo or full band recordings. The solo recordings tend to have more bare bones instrumentation, though the usual line-up of guitar, bass, and drums is present, the music is more straightforward, and the recordings expectedly more lo-fi. The selections on which de Dionyso is backed by a full band display a smooth looseness that the demos forsake in favor or more driving arrangements, and the better recording quality helps to instill a warped sense of bluesy swagger. Nothing on this disc, however, would be considered pristine by any standards, even the "better" produced tracks are gritty and dirty in a way that compliments de Dionyso's equally gravelly vocals. At its best when the music is allowed to occasionally ignore the song's prescribed beats and tapping into a more primal sense of swing, Varieties of Religious Experience captures the many moods of Mr. de Dionyso, and proves that there's a grizzled sense of old-town religious fervor in all of them.
The track order of Varieties... can be a bit confounding; the demo and later versions of "Siren" and "Mirror" are sandwiched together in an odd grouping of four tracks that stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of the disc, as most of the other songs featured more than once are separated by other tracks. And though tracking their development is made easy by their adjacency, it may have been beneficial to separate all of the alternate versions. But, then again, Old Time Relijun isn't about over-intellectualizing things or doing them the right way, just tapping into something deep down and letting it out.
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