Vol. 2.
[Sick Thirst; 2010]
A second volume of rare and hard-to-find tracks from space-rocking behemoth Wooden Shjips, collecting singles for Sub Pop and Mexican Summer along with self-released tour 7"s and a track recorded especially for Yeti magazine.
If you want to track the progression of Wooden Shjips' drone/kraut/psych/punk primitivism, you won't find a huge sea change between their self-titled 2007 debut and 2009's Dos. And given the nature of your typical odds-and-ends collection-- curious diversions at best, throwaway experiments at worst, and a whole lot of business as usual in between-- you'd be forgiven for expecting little more than fan-bait out of a release that gathers the band's between-album singles and rarities. But the big draw of Wooden Shjips is the way they go about streamlining multiple strains of psychedelic rock with the single-mindedness of a band more interested in refinement than experimentation, and there's plenty of refined material on Vol. 2.
It helps that Wooden Shjips had already synthesized a wide range of approaches into their sound by the time they set about following up their debut. Attention's been given to their old-school acid rock influences, but they draw from the other end of the 1970s just as vividly. "Loose Lips" here is a good exhibit of this-- not just with Ripley Johnson's characteristically distant, spooked Alan Vega vocals, but its nods to Chrome's aluminum-guitar sound and droning keyboards reminiscent of the first Tubeway Army album as well. B-side "Start to Dreaming" is a bit less distinct, and the rushed attempt at cramming a slow build into its first 45 seconds sounds a little superfluous, especially for one of their shorter songs. But it does a decent job of highlighting the frenetic interplay of Johnson's vertigo-inducing guitar solos and Nash Whalen's strobe-light organ riffs.
Like most of the tracks collected here, "Start to Dreaming" gives the guitar and keyboard free reign to wander elaborately over a relatively static rhythm section. Wooden Shjips songs aren't particularly restless when it comes to grooves, and good luck finding a chorus, but letting the drums and bass plod along until they sink into the background lets you zoom in on the elaborate swirls of noise that sprawl across them. They do this to bracing effect in a few different gears: The slo-mo Hawkwind swells on "I Hear the Vibrations (E-Z Version)" melt into the cracks between the beats and bubble back out again, while live-show cut "Death's Not Your Friend" stretches a cursory two-minute cut from 2006's Shrinking Moon for You EP into a blistering, loose-limbed seven-minute sprint.
Then there are the covers, which find the common threads that bind Neil Young and Serge Gainsbourg, however loosely. The two songs actually serve as good boundary markers for Wooden Shjips' usual rhythmic drone/melodic sprawl approach: at one end, buzzing stomps shot through with heat haze for "Vampire Blues"; at the other, a fluid and sinuous motion on the pop-psych slink of "Contact". Good thing there's a lot of space between those two poles, since they sound best when they're at some point on that continuum. When everything sinks into the same rigid rhythm, like the band does on the solo-deficient churn of "Outta My Head", Wooden Shjips risk sounding like a band that's treading water instead of floating through it. It's atypical, sure-- but sometimes finding new approaches isn't necessarily more important than polishing up the one that works.
