Build Your Beast a Fire, the second full-length from Brooklyn band Weird Owl, carries the same folksy psychedelia over from 2009′s Ever the Silver Cord Be Loosed, but atmospherically speaking, the albums sound worlds apart. The bluesy, acid-drenched rock found on that previous album has been spread out over many a wide spaces this time around and the result is an open-armed, communal vibe, like robed choirs ’round campfires, like groups of fringed-jacket smokers under diamond skies. Build Your Beast a Fire still bubbles with a mystic amalgam of Neil Young/Crazy Horse and some lo-fi groove, but develops what I can only call a more British sound, pulling in bits of Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, and the more modern, melodic pop styling of The Stone Roses, especially on the songs “Straj Proj” and “Skin the Dawn.” There’s 15 songs in total here, with a good handful being minute-and-half-long toss asides, but what’s left showcases Weird Owl’s ability to focus their third eye a little more on the turned on, tuned in, dropped out task at hand.
Listen to “Skin the Dawn” from Build Your Beast a Fire!
San Diego’s Dirty Sweet belong to an emerging group of rock n’ roll revolutionaries, gentlemen prospectors clad in suspenders and dirty boots, returning home from the Gold Rush where they successfully panned along the banks of the country blues river for brilliant Southern rock nuggets. Along with contemporaries The Parlor Mob, Priestbird, The Main Street Gospel, Weird Owl, and (on a popular scale) Kings of Leon, they take the same trail blazed by The Rolling Stones, Cactus, The Allman Brothers, and The Black Crowes to usher in a new wave of forty-niner dust n’ soul known simply as mustache rock. American Spiritual, Dirty Sweet’s second album, is a slice of electric Americana with its fuzzy sights set squarely on the life and times of a country on the tipping point. They’ve even ratcheted up the tension this time around; where the songs on their first album, Of Monarchs and Beggars, were more homely and laid back, the songs on American Spiritual are more aggressive and boss, and come at you like an outlaw posse at high noon (dig “Get Up, Get Out,” “Please Beware,” “Kill or Be Killed,” and “Crimson Cavalry” for the loudest examples). However, this album isn’t without its laid back moments, and songs like “Star-Spangled Glamour,” “An Empty Road,” and “You Don’t Try” are prime examples of Dirty Sweet’s mastery of the front porch, sun-drenched ballad, while the title track is a Gothic gospel number that will haunt you just right. Smile a toothless grin, my friends, because mustache rock lives.
Check out the video for “Marionette” from American Spiritual!
Hell, why stop there? Check out the video for “You’ve Been Warned” from American Spiritual as well!
Weird Owl
Dirty Sweet