Oddfellows, eh? Yeah, that just about covers it. After a nearly six-year absence, art-metal megatron Tomahawk-- Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison, Helmet/Battles drummer John Stanier, Fantmas/Melvins bassist (and newest recruit) Trevor Dunn, and Mike Patton, man of a million voices and just about as many bands-- have returned with Oddfellows their fourth LP. Recorded with Black Keys producer Collin Dupuis at the blooz-rockers' Nashville studio, Oddfellows has been touted as Tomahawk's most straightforward, stripped-down release to date. That's true enough. But a lifetime of weirdness means these four guys are pretty much incapable of doing anything the normal way. So just because Oddfellows doesn't run quite as crooked as the Tomahawk records that preceded it doesn't mean it isn't pretty bent.
Because of scheduling conflicts, Tomahawk records tend to come together quickly; these are not people with a lot of down time. But Oddfellows, written in and recorded in something like four days' time, was actually the most time-intensive Tomahawk LP so far; in interviews, Nashvillian Denison seems pleased they actually had time to go out and grab a little barbecue between takes. The tension between these guys' undeniable chops and the all-but-forced spontaneity of this music's formation is the fuel behind Tomahawk's fire; even when they've barely got half an idea between the four of them, they play the hell out of it. Stanier, as ever, remains rock-solid, yet oddly playful behind the kit; there's a reason he's one of the few drummers non-drummers know by name. Dunn-- filling the spot Kevin Rutmanis left vacant on 2007's Anonymous-- gets in where he fits in; after all but walking away with Melvins' fine 2012 LP Freak Puke, Dunn hangs back here, ably holding down the low end without overasserting himself. It's Denison who leads the charge. Practically from the first seconds, his guitar seethes and snaps like a dog on a leash, the riffs lunging at your face, looking to break the skin.
As for Patton, let's just say age does not appear to be mellowing the man. One minute, he's on the ground, slithering, saying something vile; the next, he's pleading, full-throated, desperation on his breath. It's still a strange kind of thrill, hearing him bounce around a track like this, and if you like what he does, there's no shortage of the stuff here. Though close listens will turn up plenty of jittery Pattonisms way back in the mix-- I'm partial to the cheeky "bum-b-bum-bum" in the otherwise leering "Choke Neck"-- the trademark tics mostly take a backseat to what, for Patton, scans as fairly "normal" singing. Still, you throw a yowling Patton against a Denison firecracker like "South Paw" or Oddfellows' title track, and you're pretty much bound to hit something. Denison's said he'd like Oddfellows, unlike the jitterier, more outwardly experimental Tomahawk LPs that came before, to be the kind of thing you'd want to see on a big stage, beer in hand. With riffs as colossal as the ones under "Oddfellows" and the looser, menage-nodding "Waratorium", it's not hard to picture.
Still, being as preternaturally disposed to weirdness as these guys are, Oddfellows all but refuses to take the path of least resistance. For every forward-marching "Oddfellows", there's an unholy jazz-grunge-"Cop Killer" mutant like "Rise Up Dirty Waters", or an open-ended creeper like "Baby Let's Play ____", swelling like the score to a dusty horror flick. By and large, these songs rarely end up anywhere near where they started, or where you'd expect them to. For a listener, this has kind of a decentering effect; with all the moving parts-- and especially with Patton slinking around in the corners, looking for a good place to scream-- you could play Oddfellows a couple dozen times and still not feel like you'd caught everything it throws at you. But keeping things a little uncomfortable is certainly the goal here; these songs have this kind of festering, acid-stomach chemistry to them, weird and unsettling even when they're not particularly trying to be. And even the more straightforward stuff here get a little grislier once Patton comes along: he speaks of faces in pillows, makes a request for rope. Oddfellows leaves you constantly on edge, bludgeoned with riffs, gleefully dreading another of Patton's not-so-sweet-nothings, waiting for these songs to jerk you into another time signature or maybe another genre altogether.
Oddfellows occasionally falters at the extremes; dragginess sets in whenever tempos sink too low for too long, and without the occasional break, the spasticity of some of their sharper turns can be a little crazy-making. Good as these guys are at mashing up genres on the fly, there's no denying the straighter, fist-pumpier stuff here works best; too many more like "Oddfellows" might throw the record's dark-to-somewhat-less-dark ratio off, but a couple more in that vein couldn't have hurt cohesion any. And, as with any project that comes together this quickly, you're left to wonder how much different (and, quite possibly, better) things could've been had these guys had a little more time to kick around Nashville and get reacquainted. Still, working at this clip gives just about everything on Oddfellows a kind of first-take urgency, a feeling that, whenever you get these guys in the same room, this music-- this lurid, thorny, profoundly weird music-- just comes tearing out.
