Mangoo
Neverland
Small Stone

The strange, foggy prog of Mangoo’s second full-length album (and Small Stone debut), Neverland, is absorbingly complex, and a mere cursory listen would do it a great injustice. You need to remove your foil hat and step right into its tractor beam of ray gun fuzz and analog synth to experience what really lay beyond the flashing lights, and that’s some seriously heavy hooks and rowdy raunch n’ roll. Neverland is a blacktop spaceship running on intergalactic gasoline, driven by Finnish men in silver jumpsuits who know how to have a good time, even if it’s a totally weird one. Mangoo are the past and future all at once, neanderthals at a laser show, like Sasquatch playing 2112, but they make it sound so good, cohesive, and natural that you could put this one on at any point in space and time it would make total sense. While dominated by a cosmic-psych vibe introduced on the title track, Neverland does have some monumental brassy moments (“Deathmint”) and a quick hit of banjo (“Home”), but it’s the way songs like “Diamond in the Rough,” “You,” “Lose Yourself,” “You, Robot,” and “Moom” come together with the force of five meteors colliding that really defines this one. It mellows out near the end with wall melters “Painted Black” and “Hooks” before dropping one of the most epic closers I’ve heard in a long time, “Datzun”. It may take two or three listens to sort it all out, but Neverland eventually probes that sweet spot.

Listen to “You, Robot” from Neverland!

Sun Gods in Exile
Thanks for the Silver
Small Stone

Sun Gods in Exile aren’t disgraced deities. No, I’d call ‘em Camaro cowboys, muscle car mobsters shakin’ down merchants, barkeeps, and wenches from Portland to El Paso. They’re outlaws with a mind to control the classic rock racket one laid back, Southern-fried riff at a time. Intentions regarding their sophomore album, Thanks for the Silver, were made perfectly clear when they brought in newest member Christopher Neal to lay down all kinds of organ, harmonica, and slide guitar, and so it is that the revved up motor roll of 2009′s Black Light, White Lines has been smoothed out and grooved on. It’s only appropriate that Thanks for the Silver tote titles like “Hammer Down,” “Moonshine,” “Since I’ve Been Home,” “Broken Bones,” and “Smoke and Fire,” but be it biker glam or ballad, it’ll all remind you of either AC/DC, New American Shame, The Four Horseman, or Antler. That means listening to this will make you feel like you’re gettin’ drunk on a jug fulla sunshine boogie, so pony up yer thirty pieces, partner, because you’re about to have a bloozy good time.

Listen to “Nobody Knows” from Thanks for the Silver!

Dwellers
Good Morning Harakiri
Small Stone

Well, it turns out that Peace, and Other Horrors, the four-song EP Dwellers put out last year, was an experimental little project because there’s not much folksy, acoustic Americana Gothic to be found on their debut full-length, Good Morning Harakiri. Although, to be fair, Good Morning Harakiri does contain a good deal of slide guitar, but it’s used as a vehicle for delivering some grungy psych-blues instead. I suppose the idea behind this one is that the six songs included here are the musical equivalent of splitting yourself open and spilling your guts all over the place, and if that’s the case, this Salt Lake City trio (comprised of Iota and Subrosa members) has made one fine mess. While it is atmospheric, exotic, and trippy at times, Good Morning Harakiri is, ultimately, blessedly doomed, absolutely heavy, and full of Southern-fried muscle, and if Gideon Smith was to ever rip through a set of songs from Soundgarden’s Ultramega OK in Earth’s jam room, this is what it would sound like. Forget what it does to your insides — this ritual rock rattles your goddamn bones.

Listen to “Lightening Ritual” from Good Morning Harakiri!