Espers and Growing
by Bernardo Rondeau
Espers
II
(Drag City)
Rating: 4 out of 5 rock-ons
On their sophomore effort and Drag City debut, Espers’ wildwood wonderland remains splendidly intact. The Philadelphia-based sextet belongs to the gentler end of the present free/freak folk spectrum as evinced by their brief stint supporting a reformed incarnation of the Incredible String Band a few years ago. That is to say, Espers wows and soothes instead of shocks and gnaws.
Though comprised of only seven songs, II clocks in at over 50 minutes of barbiturate bliss. As symmetrical as the clover-like shape adorning their album cover—three men, three women, all longhaired—Espers allows for shared moments of voyage. They hone their craft on languorous, fireside runes that blossom into communal excursions of cosmic proportions. Exemplary of this method is opener “Dead Queen†which, in turn, laces frittered electric currents, violin garlands, and organ purrs around a skeleton of pinprick acoustic plucks and wisps of airy harmony. By its eighth minute, a shimmering fabric of layered tones flutters where a barren ballad used to be. Though largely built from two-voiced melodies and unplugged jangle, II feels throughout like a full band effort. Whether a skywriting synthesizer, windy flute exhalations or scrawling Crybaby lead, each and every track is equally inclusive and expansive. Centerpiece “Mansfield and Cyclops†and closer “Moon Occults the Sun†inhabits the same undulating topography of latter day Sonic Youth, though Espers manages to find its way back from drifting eight-miles high while the veteran vanguard usually loses itself in feedback fog. Agile and mellow, Espers is a model of psychedelic sovereignty.
Growing
Color Wheel
(Megablade/Troubleman)
Rating: 4 out of 5 rock-ons
The last few years have found music most often being pushed forward and sideways by powers of two. For every Ariel Pink absolutist or Sunburned Hand of the Man cooperative, there’s the Panda Bear/Avey Tare collaborative alternative: duos who eschew division of labor in favor of shared experiments. This dialectical approach has yielded diverse results, from the recombinant techno bump of Mouse on Mars to the metal reductionism of Sunn0))), the Books’ archive-raiding lullabies, the meditative riffing of Om, Daft Punk’s raw data propulsions, the Skaters’ noise mysticism and, most recently, the ecstatic expanse offered by Growing. Comprised of Joe DeNardo and Kevin Doria, their amorphous sound befits their present-tense name: Growing is in a constant state of change and slippage.
Color Wheel, Growing’s fourth album and a gatefold double LP for those owning turntables, may be the pair’s first masterpiece. With a left-handed Gibson SG, synthesizer, a bass guitar and a constellation of FX pedals, De Nardo and Doria paint sparse but vivid soundscapes. Instead of the somatic flow of most ambient music, Growing’s beat-deprived vastness is a far more temperate climate: flashes of hot fuzz are interspersed with glacial showers, ethereal explosions and molten streams. A tangle of scribbled guitar halos skittering distortions in the second half of the epic opener “Fancy Period,†while the equally massive “Blue Angels†plunges into gnostic undercurrents of bristling, e-bow drone. The permanent flux of Growing’s linear abstractions—parallel tones, timbres and textures that morph into one another or merely run out in open ends—makes for fine headphone feed best ingested laid-back.