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Wooden Shjips—Vampire Blues (2010 / Psych Rock)
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re hanging garlic bulbs over our doorsteps with a great Neil Young cover.
Modern bloodsucker parable.
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To quote Howard Beale, in the 1976 Paddy Chayefski / Syndey Lumet film Network:
I don’t have to tell you things are bad.
Neil Young may have been thinking about the oil business when he wrote this, but 50 years later the commerce is you: a flesh-bodied blood bag, being exsanguinated by your very existence in the world they created so they might drain it of every last bit of the most bullshit concept man ever conceived of: money1. The rallying cry of anti-consumerism used to be You are not what you own. Maybe now it might be You are not what owns you.
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Musik Klub: “Everythang’s Workin”
Yes, I’m being purposefully simplistic.
I saw the Shjips once on a double bill with Seattle's Night Beats. The NB opened and were frenetic, full of energy, and reminded me of the snarling, fuzzy, '60s garage band, The Count 5. After their set, Wooden Shjips came on, and the vibe of the room instantly changed with their dark, buzzy, quaalude-downer drones. It was an odd gig and probably not a particularly well-matched lineup. I remember a lot of the crowd leaving during the Shjips set.
Fast forward several years, and I caught Moon Duo, and to this day, it is one of the best shows I have seen. Mainly due to them playing while enclosed behind a sheer projection screen. The lasers and lights bounced around the screen's walls, making for a very trippy, trancey visual to MD's liquidy drones.
These days, Ripley now plays around town with his Grateful Dead-inspired cosmic country outfit, the Rose City Band. I've seen them a couple of times and live, they are more rockin' than the LPs suggest.
Yeah, that lineup definitely worked better on paper—but it reflects the weird state of psych in that revival period, where Night Beats definitely became the new sound. It felt like after the third Austin Psych Fest, there was a whole mess of that jumped up, jangly garage-y psyche, like The Growlers, Holy Wave (who put out an album, Relax, that I absolutely love) Shapes Have Fangs, just to name a few off the top of my head. For me, the (g)nod was always more my cup of fur (tip of the hat to Méret Oppenheim).
Never saw Wooden Shjips, but have seen Moon Duo, once with The Soft Moon, if I remember correctly. I loved Moon Duo and didn't know the connection to Rose City Band, who I have missed seeing a few times in Vancouver— I've heard how great they are live.