The Warlocks - Heavy Deavy Skull Lover

by Tom Mendelsohn

Magic!

"There isn’t much by way of hummable accessibility on offer, but that isn’t really the point"

A canned, inaccurate and incomplete history of The Warlocks; LA eight-piece band emerges while everyone is going crazy for blues rock soon after the turn of the century. This band looks extremely unhealthy, talks the talk about boshing tons of drugs and goes on to release formulaic Velvet Underground rehashes. No one takes much interest, band disappears. Years later, band resurfaces with a new line-up and notably better material. A tale for the ages.

This is thick, treacly music, with more feedback and distortion than actual notes, mostly built out of washes of sound. It is brutally intense stuff, and could so easily go wrong. Luckily, The Warlocks don’t go too completely over the top. Sometimes the pudding gets a bit of an over-egging, and they are quite prepared to spend minutes and minutes on a moody build-up, but the pay-off is always satisfying when it eventually appears. Lyrics, and indeed singing, are mostly restricted to disembodied wails low down in the mix. It works nicely, provided you don’t turn to the album for succour or any kind of knees-up.

There isn’t much by way of hummable accessibility on offer, but that isn’t really the point, and the soundscapes which are there instead are pretty powerful and focused. What more to say? It won’t ever win a Grammy, and Woolworths won’t get round to stocking it, but that is how the cookie will have to remain crumbled.

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