It could be argued that what makes today's best
artists today's best is their keen ability (and
open-minded willingness) to mesh disparate genres in
order to achieve something entirely unique, powerful
and theirs alone. Take Beck and Radiohead, for
example — they've spent their careers dabbling in a
wide, sometimes crazed, variety of sounds that span the
history of rock 'n' roll, and clearly they came out on top
because of it.
Oakland-based Gris Gris' songs shift so often, from jazz to blues to
psychedelic to punk to plain weird, you wonder how
they come away without sounding like a sloppy
disjointed mishmash. Yet they hold together — somehow. Defying the confines of a single genre, they have instead managed to invent their own.
Sounding ahead of their time, a bit like a modern-day
Velvet Underground, Gris Gris' second album, For
The Season, feels like an all-night drug trip: there are moments that feel like blood rushing to the head, moments of chaos and
confusion, instances of epiphany, and, of course, a
fuzzy, dawn-lit comedown. Packed with burning,
psychedelic guitar, feedback and
distortion, glowing, middle-of-the-desert soundscapes,
tribal, distant percussion, and hazy, epic builds that
go nowhere in reality and everywhere in your mind, the
album is an all-over-the-place success.
For the Season begins with a damaged jazz horn
section that whines and cries on
"Ecks Em Eye," welcoming the listener to the rebellion to come. In the back, whispery vocals seem
to be expressing dismay. The Spanish-flavored "Cuerpos
Haran Amor Extrano" features a down-and-out mood,
sluggish tambourine shakes and traveling, vibrating
guitar riff that feels well-suited to a creepy David
Lynch flick.
The stomping, infectious "Down With
Jesus" clicks and ticks with speed and grace, while
guitar riffs slur and bend together rockabilly-style before ascending into fuzzed-out chaos. "The
Non-Stop Tape" begins like a distant religious hymn
before melting down into squealing mad experimental
elements that sound like a record, or perhaps an
unstoppable tape, being played backwards. "Medications
#4" is an early '60s-style love ballad that waltzes
and bounces delicately about before a loud, screeching
guitar shows up to break it up. A simple acoustic folk strum and softhearted singing make the jangly
"Mademoiselle of the Morning" similarly tame compared to the loud, heavy experimentation
elsewhere on the album: "These lips you should
know/ Will never go cold," Gris Gris founder
and songwriter Greg Ashley sings gently.
As time passes and music progresses, winding its way
into new territory time after time, it seems artists
have more and more to work with. Only the
talented — no, make that multitalented — know how to make it work
for them.
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