Ah, the great meditative bait-and-switch. The sampled instructor's voice on "Air Waves (Intro)" promises "pure consciousness," but after the ensuing track full of simmering bass drone, all you get from "Under Skin or By Name" is a hammer to the face with "HAWKWIND" scratched somewhere on the wooden handle. White Hills have a few tricks up their sleeves, but even if they didn't, they manage to take the judicious wah-wah and space noises from Lemmy's old, infamous, severely underappreciated band without forgetting the role rhythm played in it.
Note how long it takes to get to the rock, though, and how quickly it recedes. By "Under Skin or By Name", it's apparent what the band wants to do, but it's only at the record's end where it puts together everything it can do. Glitter Glamour Atrocity is far more carefully and deliberately paced than any listener would assume from its scuzz-rock title and cover, and the moments of ambience and calm might just outnumber the stretches of full-on freak-out.
"Air Waves" isn't exactly spitting in your mouth, featuring a stiff, tasteful rhythm and an almost jangly guitar line; the tribal groove of "Spirit of Exile"-- the album's most accessible moment-- simmers gorgeously without ever bubbling over. And, after four minutes of palette-cleansing hum with "Distance", comes an acoustic-led instrumental. It's almost an entirely different band that comes in with the brick-heavy psychedelia of "Love Serve Remember", but the transitions feel natural. It's during that track's politically dour death march ("never question these words I say", they chant) where the band really begins to stretch out, as the guitars recede for a woman singing ghostly lullaby and a recorded-- and heavily edited-- speech from George W. Bush, devilishly rearranged to have him label himself a terrorist and a threat, showing more culpability in this re-constituted address than in his entire presidency. Then, a guitar solo."
In fact, White Hills don't really let it all out until the near 14-minute closer and title track, when they finally throw everything they have at the wall-- the riffs, the solos, the pedals, the pre-recorded proselytizing-- and it sticks like projectile puke. GGA doesn't tease, necessarily, it's just overwhelmingly patient. It's a tribute to heroes, it's a modern twist, it has a current of political unrest, but above all that it knows when to hold back. This is an honest-to-god-album, with peaks and valleys, crests and chill-out sections-- hell, "Glitter Glamour Atrocity" alone has all that. You might take only one or two songs away at first blush (probably "Spirit of Exile" or the title track), but it's a consistently engaging listen from end to end.
