You cannot stop Acid Mothers Temple; you can only hope to contain them. Fans of the relentless Japanese psych cooperative have had a perpetual embarrassment of riches the past several years: By now, the savvier amongst us could've accumulated over 15 official albums released by the group since 2000. (And that's not counting god-knows-how-many CDRs, side projects, and spinoffs.) Theirs is quickly becoming one of the most daunting discographies in contemporary music.
Does the Cosmic Shepherd Dream of Electric Tapirs? is yet another addition to their fans' bounty and everyone else's collective confusion. Blissfully unfamiliar with concepts like restraint or moderation (or, one suspects, words like "rehearsal" or "outtake") AMT's every gesture is so amplified or exaggerated that it's as though they intend their work to be witnessed from across the solar system. In the past, they've proven themselves equally adept at intense, Blue Cheer-inspired thunder-psych as well as delicate hippie folk, and on Tapirs they indulge themselves extensively in each idiom. The group's revolving membership has waxed and waned over the years, but here they're trimmed down to a quintet, with guitarist and "speed guru" Makoto Kawabata surprisingly taking more of a supporting role than usual.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in smoke-filled rumpus rooms all over the world when the news spread earlier this year that vocalist Cotton Casino was parting ways with AMT. But she is present and very much accounted for on these recordings from 2002-2003, and knowing the way this bunch stockpiles material, I think it's premature to dub this her swan song. Casino lends some Yoko-esque yowling to the quaintly titled thrash of opener "Daddy's Bare Meat", which also features blistering electric soloing from Kawabata and AMT's now familiar and somewhat cheesy Battlestar Galactica-like sci-fi sound effects.
After that chaotic but less-than-innovative start, AMT promptly switch gears and decide to do some extensive daisy-picking and beard-stroking. Multi-instrumentalist and "cosmic joker" Tsuyama Atsushi takes the lead on the acoustic-based "Suzie Sixteen", a short ditty that sounds like Os Mutantes singing doo-wop with your neighborhood alleycats (yes, there is actually meowing) and the Incredible String Band-referencing "The Assassin's Beautiful Daughter" which features such a gentle weave of guitar and recorder that it's sure to send you traipsing barefoot across the first meadow you can find.
But no Acid Mothers Temple release would be complete without a mind-swallowing epic, and the 25-minute "Dark Star Blues" fulfills the requirement here. If there are any direct quotations of the Grateful Dead's legendary showpiece "Dark Star", I'm not sophisticated enough to detect them. Kawabata and company do, however, ride a simple, repetitive electric riff and Casino's towering vocals well beyond any galaxy Bobby Weir has visited in the past couple of decades. Personally, I'd have appreciated the drums being given more prominence in the mix-- the muddy sound keeps this track from being as devastating as it must've been in the room where it was recorded.
The record finishes with the pure, featureless drone of "The Transmigration of Hopheads" (I'm unsure if there's an overarching point to the Philip K. Dick allusions of their titles here), a track even more minimalist than AMT's 2002 version of Terry Riley's In C and one that serves as a soothing tonic to the turbulence that's preceded it. It's an oddly fitting end to an album that splashes dead center into the ocean of AMT's burgeoning catalog.
