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Badfinger, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Pretty
Things, Nick Drake, and The Zombies should probably be added to
that list.
The Grip Weeds’ MySpace player features four
sterling cuts from their fourth album “Giant on the Beach”
(Rainbow Quartz, 2005):
* “Closer to Love” – Sung by Pinell,
the lyrical progression of this song is right off a Hollies album.
About two minutes in, after a series of “Walking Barefoot”
verses, she crosses an echo-laden bridge between islands of phased,
swirling guitars and reverb, and charges into the chorus with her
clear vocals way out front. Right then and there, I’m mindlessly
smiling. Sonically, the song reminds me a little of Let’s Active
around the time of “Cypress,” but if I close my eyes I
also think I might be in the middle of a Peanut Butter Conspiracy
show at the Pasadena Exhibition Hall circa 1968. (Yes, kids, I’m
carbon-dating myself there.)
* “Get By” – starts like CSNY’s
“Ohio,” acquires a martial “Children of the Revolution”
stomp, and then kicks up a wall of slicing Rickenbacker 12-strings.
The interlocked Televisionesque playing underscores vintage Britpop
vocals that evoke the best of the “Go Now”-era Moody Blues.
Is it me, or is the drumming here as primally groovy as Ian Paice’s
on Deep Purple’s “Fireball”? On “Strange Kind
of Woman,” maybe – guess I gotta pull that one outta the
milk-crate to find out.
* “Realities” – a paisley pillow
for your 9-to-5 head featuring a wall of jangling Les Pauls that
wax purple and oh-so-hazy under later, more serious Monkees-like
vocalizing. Features some Harrisonic sitar-like backwards playing
and premium Roy Wood fuzz meeting up on the soul train to visit
Maharishi with Kula Shaker in tow. Someone, somewhere is breaking
out their hidden-behind-the-belt-buckle hash-pipe to this slice
of a great band in complete harmonic convergence.
* “Infinite Soul” – a wah-wah-drenched
bit of acid-folk with blistering Merseybeat hooks to die for. Made
for the neo-velvet-booted set to shake their moptops to while contemplating
the breakup of the Beau Brummels. Or for Summer of Love junkies
to hum while dreaming of discovering a cache of lost Scott Mackenzie
tapes. Quicksilver, clanging Superdrag guitars punctuated by a steel
sliver of a solo, and those so-Posies vocals that always send me
on a search for a girl with flowers in her hair. You know, the type
you’d like to slowly body-paint a peace sign on. I caught the
tail end of this one on Idle Rich’s garage-band show on WMUH-FM
while on I-78 near Allentown, PA after a Smithereens show this Spring.
It was the creme between the cookies of The Easybeats and Screaming
Lord Sutch. I know, I know – that sounds like the perfect musical
Oreo for the Little Steven in all of us.
While these four tracks could be convincingly passed
off as chart-toppers in the Summer of ’67, the patchouli quotient
of the epigrammatic lyrics about love and lost innocence is effectively
hopped up by assertive, more modern playing that makes each song
fresh-sounding. This is not your father’s (or grandfather’s)
drowsy, zen-positive hippie music. I would imagine Paul Weller and
Andrew Loog Oldham might listen to this stuff while pouring themselves
Sunday morning black and tans.
MySpace also showcases the video for “Astral
Man,” which is a swirling dervish of a track soaking in Sixties
power chords and poesy. Shared-mike high-harmony vocals by the brothers
Reil, and Pinell’s scorching riff-work on that gold-top Gibson
of hers, drive this song ahead with Who-meets-Zep fury. Images of
the band on a magic carpet ride through space and time are inter-cut
with the playing, giving the whole thing a sweetly cheesy electric
kool-aid acid test feel.
And, by the way, any band that puts a pic of Rex
Ingram on their CD is A-OK in my book. Rex played the menacing,
giant genie in 1940’s “The Thief of Baghdad.” That’s
as seminal an image from my youth as a Blue Meanie or Godzilla,
and it is undoubtedly lurking in the heads of all four Grip Weeds
too.
-fin-
www.myspace.com/gripweeds
posted by MyspaceMusicReview @ 12:25 PM
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