Wooden Shjips- West (Thrill Jockey 279)

This is the new full length record WS from San Francisco have released. The band is always releasing a 7” or EP here and there. Anyway, like there other records, there are 3-4 short songs on each side and that characteristic psychedelic sound and bass groove remains the same. As always the band go for the warm analog sound with lots of fuzz guitar and organ. Black Smoke Rise is a repetitive hypnotic fuzz guitar organ driven track with laid back stoned vocals. Cross is quite cool with a nice slower spacey repetitive groove with the fuzz guitar mixed our full and the clean guitar solo is allowed to sor to float free as the organ reverberates you mind. Lazy Bones is a much more uptemop track with a cool bass line and organ. Home closes the A side. A pretty standard and boring track. Flight is a slow track with a repetitive rhythm with the organ the main changing part as he sings some spoken vocals in a slow stoned manner to start but then they really take off with some killer spacey guitar playing. Great stuff. Looking out has a nice grooving organ line and really spaced out guitar sound but this is a quite catchy track. Overall, this is a standard Wooden Shjips record with some real stand out tracks like Flight but I would love to see the band take a few chances…

http://www.myspace.com/woodenshjips http://www.thrilljockey.com