Chris Robinson
Brotherhood
The Magic Door
Warner
From
the same sessions that yielded CRB’s debut LP, Big Moon Ritual (reviewed in last month’s issue by Marty Jones),
comes the companion piece, The Magic Door,
a big pot of psych sludge that bubbles with a slow, menacing intensity,
belching up steaming clouds of ‘70s country/rock, continuing along the same
‘big, booming soundscape’ tangent its predecessor mastered with consummate
ease.
A
bit shorter and sharper than Big Moon
Ritual however (aside from the 14 minute ‘Vibration And Light Suite’), The Magic Door eases back into the late
‘60s a tad more – you’ve got slightly slower Creedence-esque numbers (opener,
‘Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go’ for example); moog-drenched tunes in which
Robinson channels the Lizard King himself (you can feel the sweat flying from
his brow, he’s probably naked as he sings), soaring guitars which cut and burn
as they lumber along like a herd of wooly mammoths running in slow motion.
Elsewhere,
the aforementioned ‘Vibration And Light Suite’ almost touches upon disco with
it’s understated funky guitar riffage, whereas ‘Appaloosa’ pulls it back and
the band settle in to the country-ish mode they obviously feel more than
comfortable in. And then there’s the
band’s version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.
Ingredients: a band with instruments, a packet of Rizzlas, a bag of the
mellowest bud you can lay your hands on.
Method: roll bud in Rizzlas and smoke, play an Elvis cover. Feeds: everyone. Awesome.
Jimmy
Reed’s ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ finishes proceedings, a luxurious mix of
stoner blues and Doors’ ‘Riders On The Storm’ piano lethargy, a sugar-sweet end
to a record which sees a band eschewing the New and the Now and getting high on
sounds which epitomised the analogue, the warm, the real and the earthiness of
a time and place we here at Rhythms
wish was still prevalent today. Epic is
one word to describe this release, but it’s a word that doesn’t carry nearly
enough strength.
Samuel J. Fell
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