VISTA CHINO Peace Napalm Records Sept. 3rd, 2013
(PREFACE) I'm rather surprised given the build-up towards this record with these particular musicians, that there wouldn't have been some manner of album review, formal and detailed or informal and brief, in this particular forum (not including H.P. Taskmaster’s brilliant review). Coupled with the album leaking almost a month ago and some of us downloading it because we couldn't wait a second longer (myself included, but having pre-sale-purchased the CD, a Red vinyl, and tickets to see them twice this month, I didn't feel quite as naughty-naughty), it's a bit more odd. So besides the two bonus tracks 'Carnation' and 'Sunlight At Midnight', I've gotten to sit with Peace about a month now. It's given me pause to write about it, more than most (or virtually any) other albums that come to me. Private 'journaling' really, not since StonerRock.com have I contributed much in the way of album reviews anywhere. I loved that site/ community and may have lost my taste for this stuff when we lost SR.com to god-knows-who that fucked with it and ruined shit for everyone. But the years, the weight of expectation, then trying to shed that weight (which is really a burden) in order to open my mind and listen to something for what it is, culminates in a lot of thoughts, feelings and ideas. So you have your briefest review below, and below that the “brain dump” for those who give a shit what one man thinks…
(THE QUICK LONG AND SHORT OF IT) If you go into this album expecting to hear Kyuss, hoping to hear Kyuss, hoping to hear as close an imitation of Kyuss minus Josh, then you will be doing yourself a disservice and you won’t really ‘hear’ Peace. If you are a fan of Brant Bjork’s long solo career, this debut by Vista Chino has much, much more in common with that; more in common to the vibe, feel, style and execution of a fat, heavy Brant Bjork solo album with John Garcia singing and Nick Oliveri on bass. Including cooler desert breeze moments and jazzier flares, with Brant’s always in-the-pocket and oozing with swing drumming. John’s age defying voice has never sounded stronger (it’s sounded ‘as good’ such as Unida’s unreleased album, but my point is he’s still going real strong).
(FOR THOSE WITH TOO MUCH TIME) It’s been 18 years since Josh Homme last played in Kyuss. And if his first Queens of The Stone Age full-length outing reflected still-vivid reminders of the band from whence he came three years before, albeit in a slightly more poppy and stripped-down manner, then Josh’s sixth and most recent Queens of The Stone Age outing, this year’s …Like Clockwork, reflects virtually none. Eighteen years later, albeit a long time, I cannot hear much of a trace of the ‘Circus Leaves Town Josh’ vs. the ‘...Like Clockwork Josh.’ He is gone (although ‘I Appear Missing’ is one of the stronger songs he’s written). Of course, it has been almost 20 years and people can and do change, for our purposes, guitarists- how they write songs, record them, their tones, etc. For some fans of the Queens, safe to say the johnny-come-lately’s quotient, that’s probably just hunky-dory. They have no frame of reference (speaking generally), of pre-Queens when a little band called Kyuss was carving shit out, for themselves, and for many bands who followed in their wake. For other fans of the Queens, safe to say those who have been listening to Kyuss since the early 90’s and likely followed many, most, or all of the post-Kyuss projects which include the Queens (Slo Burn, Unida, Brant Bjork & The Bros, Hermano, Mondo Generator, Desert Sessions, et al.), that’s probably not so good. Unless you do enjoy all Homme’s work, it’s disheartening that with time his songwriting is now pretty far removed from what originally made us love his playing, his tones, heft, fuzz, psychedelic-atonal-classic-denser-than-tungsten guitar tonnage (and coupled working with and off-of Scott Reeder? Fuckin forget about it… It’s on a pedestal with Iommi/ Butler. To me at least). I myself am going through a like/ dislike relationship with …Like Clockwork. Trying to take it for what it is vs. what it’s not (which, in the interest of health, is what I’m attempting with most things). But the feelings aren’t as strong as a ‘love/ hate’ relationship. It merely hovers around ‘like/ dislike’. My negative feelings toward Era Vulgaris were very strong. The new one’s a little better, but my real love of the Queens centers around the 1998 to 2003 period. Back then I couldn’t get enough of them, and 2003 was the last time I saw them live as well. Like any of my great loves, I acquired as many live shows as I could. But the 3 albums over the last ten years, too much of feeling ‘vaguely annoyed’ colors the experience listening to them. The fanboy is gone.
It could be said that most all the post-Kyuss bands both Brant and John were involved in maintained threads of the desert rock vibe, whether overt and strong, or subtle and suggestive. Those two guys never forgot their roots or tried to reinvent themselves as something else entirely, despite the almost two decades since Kyuss. And though the journey, namely in the last 18 months, has been challenging to say the least (thanks to the nasty lawsuit), we come back around again to Vista Chino. In terms of personnel involved, it’s the closest to Kyuss we as fans have ever come. And whatever the tremendous weight of that expectation we put upon Vista Chino, and to whatever degree the band put upon themselves, an album of new material by three of the founding Kyuss members is now here… We can either wrestle with what got them here, or we can cast all that aside (best we can) and attempt to listen to their new album Peace on its own, allow it to be what it is (vs. what it’s not) and that’s probably the best or most positive vantage point you can approach from when listening without distraction to this album…
…If you can do that, ye shall be rewarded. I don’t believe I ever ‘got’ an album on my first listen, and this one was no different. My first listen to Peace left me a little flat even. But no sooner than the second spin-through did its secrets begin unfurling. Some of it feels a bit like Kyuss, more of it feels like a real heavy Brant Bjork solo album with John’s unmistakable vocals over the top (which now feel indistinguishable from ‘desert rock’). The jerky-rhythmic grooves are chunky and swinging. Each successive listen reveals that somehow they still have managed to begin carving their own identity. And the album gets better and better as it progresses. A pleasant surprise is Brant singing lead vocals on the first half of ‘Planets 1&2’. John takes over in the second half, along with a complete change of vibe in the song. The two guys never ‘harmonize’ or sing together, but ‘Dark and Lovely’ shows them doing a call-and-response style vocals. It’s very cool, and one of the best songs on the record. More and more moments show themselves. For me, it’s not possible to entirely separate …Like Clockwork and Peace as both albums came out fairly close to one another, and both were being developed right during the lawsuit of the two ‘camps’ against one another. One album is most decidedly ‘desert rock’. The other is a more polished, slick, moody pop record that has no inklings of the desert. Even if, in an alternate reality, the band did get Josh to play guitar with them, the songwriter Josh is now doesn’t really have a place anymore. Not with them. It wouldn’t, couldn’t mesh. And I wouldn’t want it to. Yes I would have loved Scott Reeder playing bass with them, he’s always been one of my favorite bass players. But that’s virtually an identical infeasibility. In summary, I really dig the Vista Chino album. Largely, I think, because I also dig the work this album has much more in common with than Kyuss, and that’s Brant’s solo records. And I look forward to seeing them in September over a couple of nights.
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