The psychedelic rock of Wooden Shjips has been described in numerous ways, but until recently few had crowned them as a particularly melodic concern. With their last release that started to change, and with the brand new Back to Land, the focus upon songs is even more apparent. It finds them abandoning the heavier environments of their earlier work, but the eight songs here are still very solid in presenting a smartly conceived fresh direction.
Wooden Shjips (for those unfamiliar, the j is silent) is an outfit born in San Francisco with members currently residing in Oregon that has been releasing records since 2006, and along the way they’ve often gotten tagged as Space Rock. Not to split hairs, but I’ve always thought of them more simply as a psychedelic band, though a prime one that managed to combine all sorts of classic elements into a heady, lengthy and, against the odds, contemporary broth.
Across their string of albums Wooden Shjips has basically never reminded me of Hawkwind, which is the act that immediately springs to mind whenever the term space rock gets bandied about. However, I’ll note that the self-released 2006 10-inch “Shrinking the Moon for You,” a fine 3-song affair which brought the group their initial tide of accolades, sported a track with the title “Space Clothes,” so who am I to quibble?
But it also occurs to me that those describing them as space rock weren’t really attempting to make any direct stylistic correlation to precedent but rather placing them in a loosely defined category based upon a general assessment of the music’s relationship to the overall norm. Or less wordily, compared to most stuff Wooden Shjips is indeed “spaced-out.”
And in that case, I can surely dig it. Plus, the descriptor of space rock also helps to distinguish things somewhat. While modern psych of Bay Area origin, Wooden Shjips’ early motions ultimately shared very little with the late ‘60s San Fran ballroom scene, being much rougher in execution than early Grateful Dead or Quicksilver Messenger Service (and we’ll leave discussion of Steve “Space Cowboy” Miller out of this.) So in Wooden Shjips’ case, geographical location seemed to be of no great significance, for theirs was music that seemingly could’ve evolved from any number of regions.
Backing this up was the palpable affinity for the more aggressive excursions of Krautrock and the druggy ambiance of Spacemen 3. By extension, they occasionally tickled the ear like a nastier exponent of the shoegaze genre, a circumstance that helped to place their music in a roughly contempo setting and also brought them into the arena of modern “guitar bands.”
And in the manner of many current underground musicians, Wooden Shjips’ guitarist Ripley Johnson is a busy fellow. Since 2009 he’s also been half of Moon Duo with keyboardist Sanae Yamada, the pair thus far releasing the “Killing Time” EP, a whole slew of singles (a couple of them splits), and three Sacred Bones-issued albums capped off by the 2012’s excellent Circles.
That record couples pretty well with Wooden Shjips’ West, their 2011 debut for Thrill Jockey after producing two LPs, ‘07’s self-titled effort and ‘09’s Dos, plus two comps of 7-inch and EP material straightforwardly labeled Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, most of it for the imprint Holy Mountain. The arrival of West did reveal considerable adjustment and growth. For starters, while the songs still inhabited durations appropriate for a psychedelic band, it was also only the second Wooden Shjips long-player to not include a cut topping the ten minute mark.
Across its seven tracks West also featured a heightened focus on more fully developed songwriting, though this shouldn’t suggest that Wooden Shjips had gone pop or that they were previously wanting in songic terms. Instead they were even more taggable as a psych/shoegaze proposition, though this also wasn’t a startling development since the template had been already explored on Dos, in particular via that disc’s “Aquarium Time.”
But taken in tandem with Back to Land, freshly out this week from Thrill Jockey, West does seem to mark a new phase for Wooden Shjips, one that’s equally concerned with songs as it is in extending a certain sound. More specifically, when both are heard in combo with Moon Duo’s Circles, it details an interesting chapter in guitarist Johnson’s artistic progression.
It’s all far from interchangeable, though. Back to Land is distinct from West, and if at this stage I find it less rewarding than its predecessor it’s still a strong and detectably unusual album. Where West was shoegazey (and also Kraut-like), the new record’s opening title track is easily their most pop-inclined moment to date. It can, with no caveats, be described as catchy, especially in relation to their prior output.
And yet this isn’t any sort of betrayal to what’s came before, since the recognizable keyboard textures are still very much in evidence, as is the propulsive simplicity of Wooden Shjips’ drum attack as delivered by Omar Ahsanuddin. And if perhaps once evaluated as a guitar band, Ahsanuddin’s contribution is an increasingly important factor in their recent course, one that when coupled with Dusty Jermier’s bass locks into a groove making Back to Land’s pop qualities quite deceptive.
While some of what’s here finds them flirting with a sound remindful of Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, in the end this is mostly surface, as second cut “Ruins” offers a keyboard/drums scenario that strikes me like a more laid back Suicide. That New York duo has been a longtime influence on Wooden Shjips, but with Back to Land they’ve hit upon eight songs that are very much like something Martin Rev and Alan Vega might’ve proposed had they evolved on the West Coast of ‘70s USA.
This aspect was also evident on West, in particular on its closer “Rising,” and when considering that LP’s title Wooden Shjips are, at least for these ears, really asserting their geographical setting in later life. And while the garage-like organ of “Ghouls” might seem to weaken the comparison to Suicide, please don’t forget that Rev and Vega notoriously covered “96 Tears.”
The acoustic strum found on “These Shadows” greatly increases the West Coast atmosphere. The influence of Neil Young has more than once been cited as apropos to Wooden Shjips, but other than on an early cover of “Vampire Blues” (from Neil’s killer ’74 alb On the Beach) and West’s Shjips’ original “Home,” the connection has never impacted me as all that explicit.
Well, to be frank it still doesn’t, but “These Shadows” does register like a tune that might be found on some psych-rock vet’s early ‘70s solo LP (and notably, Back to Land’s jacket design is directly inspired by On the Beach.) And with Nash Whalen’s organ tones and Ahsanuddin’s determinedly unembellished playing, the Suicide vibe remains.
From there the uptempo “In the Roses” brings variance to a record that is far less pop-informed that its opener indicates. The emphasis on songs is evident for sure, but they are tied to a strict focus on a sonic milieu that could easily leave a pop-lover’s thirst for variety unquenched, even within the confines of a specific tune. And this makes sequential listening to Back to Land pretty crucial to a verdict over its gradually surfacing objective.
“Other Stars” finds Johnson’s guitar gliding above an unflagging rhythmic engine, and at the risk of overusing a comparison, as it plays it hits like Suicide if they’d elected to delve into a space rock zone. How ‘bout them apples? And “Servants” continues the rec’s investigations throughout its longest selection, the only one to break the six-minute mark, though everything here except “Ghouls” does last for over five.
This leaves closer “Everybody Knows” (this is nowhere?) to couple with “These Shadows” as Back to Land’s two entries most strenuously detailing an almost Laurel Canyon-ish ‘70s rock sensibility. The lack of contrivance makes it all go down rather nicely, though I suspect that folks partial to the rawer pre-West era of Wooden Shjips might be less swayed. I’ll admit that upon first listen this was my kneejerk reaction (a feeling helped along by the Massacre/Warhols touches, neither group being amongst my personal faves), but upon additional listening my esteem for the whole has improved substantially.
I’ll add in closing that in terms of sheer impact, Back to Land strikes me a less successful than West. Their latest is lacking in any creative missteps across its running time, but as it plays the whole is generally more pleasant than intense, and power was an aspect that West happily retained from the earlier Wooden Shjips releases.
But Back to Land’s less-heavy conception was obviously by design, and as an expression of the pleasurable it does succeed rather well. And I’m fairly certain that Johnson and cohorts will be testing these boundaries again very soon.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
