Thrill Jockey has just released Plankton Wat’s Drifter’s Temple, the latest work from ex-Eternal Tapestry member Dewey Mahood. Those familiar with Mahood through either his former band or this current project will recognize him as a psychedelic kind of guy, though one that refreshingly chooses to sidestep clichés. This new LP, an instrumental affair with a rich focus on the expansive possibilities of the guitar, continues his very fruitful artistic development, and discerning psych fans unschooled in Mahood’s thing could very easily find this album right up their alley.
Dewey Mahood has been recording under the moniker Plankton Wat for roughly a decade now. However, the last few years have seen in increase in profile for the project. And while some will recognize Mahood as a member of the band Eternal Tapestry, he left that unit late last year, turning Plankton Wat into his principal mode of musical expression.
Eternal Tapestry is noted for their thick and heavy psych-rock, with many of their excursions pushing deep into double-digit run-times. Loaded with pedals, distortion and propulsive rhythms in cahoots with that likeable desire to extend, much of Eternal Tapestry’s work can connect like a Blue Cheer-fixated incarnation of Philadelphia psych merchants Bardo Pond.
But their music holds quite a few interesting additional facets, as well as a bevy of shorter numbers, with some of the action recalling the edgier side of San Fran ballroom rock. I’ve also detected a little prime-era Hawkwind (always a good thing to observe), the tribal side of Krautrock (ditto), some Stooges-like sax skronk, and even minor touches of shoegaze.
While still being decidedly psych in orientation, Mahood’s work as Plankton Wat is considerably different, though the distinction seems to have grown over time. A whole heap of cassettes and CDRs have surfaced under the name since around 2007, but Plankton Wat’s debut on vinyl LP came in ’09 with Dawn of the Golden Eternity, released on DNT Records.
Parts of that album are mildly reflective of what Eternal Tapestry had been thrusting out, but it’s also apparent rather quickly that as Plankton Wat, Mahood was less concerned with heaviness and more wrapped up with the blissfully drifting side of psychedelic affairs. Acoustic guitar was prevalent, sometimes melding with hand drums but at other times going it alone, and along with a ghostly banjo/vocal tandem there was even a brief rhythmic passage remindful of decades old African field recordings.
In the “out record” sweepstakes, Dawn of the Golden Eternity provides quite a kick, and one that’s quite suitable for late-night listening. While its final two tracks do stretch out a bit, the album is notable for the overall conciseness of the selections, a few of which tally durations under two minutes. This circumstance can bring a fragmentary aura to large portions of the disc that’s very appropriate for solitary witness in the early AM hours.
Last year, Mahood found a home for Plankton Wat with Thrill Jockey, the label having previously issued three records by Eternal Tapestry (along with that band’s very worthwhile collab with Sun Araw). The result was Spirits, Plankton Wat’s second proper LP. While just as psych-driven as its predecessor, Spirits did largely exchange the intriguingly bent atmosphere of Dawn of the Golden Eternity for a considerably more in focus snapshot of his developing approach.
Spirits’ key attribute was copious amounts of assertively played but non-assaultive expansionist guitar, much of its string burn of unsurprising Bay Area lineage but also lacking in any sort of neo or calculatedly anachronistic vibes. In a nice twist however, some of Mahood’s guitar wrangling was suggestive of a Robert Fripp that got dumped out in the Southwestern desert to bake under the intense rays of the sun. In total, Spirits’ ten tracks left a very favorable impression and more importantly, promise for subsequent endeavors.
Based on his new one for Thrill Jockey, Mahood hasn’t disappointed. Drifter’s Temple’s opening cut “Toward the Golden City” rises slowly to present a cascading blend of electric and acoustic guitars that are fleshed out with the psych-kissed tones of a judiciously employed organ. As the cut unwinds the robust strum and searching twang fall into a fine druggy balance.
In a manner reflective of Eternal Tapestry’s infrequent use of vocals, Plankton Wat eschews the human voice, an element that might breed disinterest in some listeners. But for the purposes of what Mahood is laying down, this missing component is actually a major plus. To be frank, one of the problems with so much psychedelic music, an issue that extends all the way back to the original wave, was a far too frequent desire to integrate singers into the stew.
Often these vocalists tilted the music towards blues, folk, soul/R&B, or pop climates, with the ever-loving psychedelia eventually suffering in the bargain. Not so with Plankton Wat, and good for Mahood. Instead the focus continues to be on the guitar. “Changing Winds” opens with some glistening electric string bending that morphs into a ragged cloud of distortion as those leads continue to sing. Then things quiet down as a hard-struck acoustic carries the track to its close.
Quite impressive is Mahood’s sense of dynamics as his piece’s move along, the music lacking in abruptness or moments where the elements feel grafted together. He’s also got a strong handle on mood. This is pretty essential to Drifter’s Temple’s success, since the album’s described as a loose narrative based on the guitarist’s childhood in Northern California.
In accord with this ambition, the sounds of “Klamath at Dusk” serve its title well. It plays like supplemental music for the end of a typical afternoon in a small town. The guitars are casual yet brisk, and they lend a touch of eloquence to the (perceived) everyday. Movie-like in the best sense, the unfolding tapestry lands right at the point where the realism of daylight is diminishing and morphing into the environments of noir.
Suitably, the disposition of “Nightfall” is tenser, with Mahood’s playing more outward bound and also increasingly cyclical. Furthermore, the addition of some very basic rhythmic accompaniment also toughens the track’s intensity. But “Empire Mines” offers up a healthy dose of fingerpicking, though one occasionally underscored with electric currents that keep the album flowing in distinctly psych waters.
And Mahood’s smart construction continues, with the cut segueing into “Hash Smuggler’s Blues.” Thankfully in this case the cut isn’t actually a blues in form, but rather more of the guitarist’s string work wrung through building waves of shimmering effects. Based on this track and “Klamath at Dusk” in particular, it would seem that Mahood has a real future in the movie soundtrack field, if only some budding indie auteur would ask him.
With “Dance of Lumeria” the fingerpicking returns, nimble but non-show-offy playing accented with gusts of electric slide that initially reflect a renegade pedal-steel. But this additive quickly blooms into something much more interesting, the tones briefly reminiscent of a young Jerry Garcia gone Hawaiian. It’s the one point on Drifter’s Temple that I would’ve liked to have heard stretched out for a (good long) while. And “Western Lament” finds the fingerpicking sensibility shifted to Mahood’s electric for some very pleasant results, especially towards the end, when waves of distortion step to the forefront.
Maybe the most striking aspect of Drifter’s Temple is how it remains deeply psych in orientation while stepping afield of rock structure. Spirits did this as well, but it still often connected like a rock album even if it actually wasn’t. While Mahood does have contributors on this disc, Drifter’s Temple feels far more “solo” than anything I’ve heard him do before (though I’ll confess to being unfamiliar with the cassette and CDR releases), with cuts like “Western Lament” recalling the ambitions of Neil Young’s later solo work.
Except better, partly because Mahood’s outward bound tendencies don’t suffer from meandering. The tracks here are all relatively succinct in length, but in the wrong hands a six-minute song can feel like six hours. That’s not the case with “Bread of Dreams,” which throws in some lightly blown flutes to produce a nice West Coast into United Kingdom psych-folk scheme. And Drifter’s Temple is closed with the crawling distorto-sprawl of “Siskiyou Caverns,” easily the record’s most intense (and rock tangible) individual track, and perhaps its best. For in the abrasion comes a discernible beauty.
Based on Mahood’s very attractive half of a recently issued split LP with the prolific Midwest psych outfit Expo ’70, he remains an artist not particularly easy to pin down. But his personality is evident in everything I’ve heard thus far, and this new one is another very good record. Modern psychedelia is too frequently the locale of fops and retro-obsessed tomfoolery. Drifter’s Temple is a remedy for these ills.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
