Every fifteen seconds in America, Mississippi Delta and hill country blues are co-opted, mimicked, or re-invented by a bunch of white people with thrift-store guitars: Mercifully, Old Time Relijun, Olympia, Washington's mostly-bearded noise-blues quartet, have dismantled the form so thoroughly and recklessly that Catharsis in Crisis, their seventh LP, is less an homage than a passing nod. The record may steal bits and pieces from classic American idioms, but their clamor is all their own.
Old Time Relijun have been recording for more than a decade, first forming in 1992 and signing to Calvin Johnson's K Records in 1995; since then, they've contributed to several compilations, released six albums and issued a mess of 7" singles. Mostly, OTR serves as a vehicle for frontman Arrington de Dionyso's bizarre avant-blues dirges: Members drift in and out (past drummers include the Microphones' Phil Elvrum and Jamie Peterson of Deerhoof side project the Curtains), but de Dionyso keeps writing confounding stompers and then recruiting his pals to help slam them out (the current lineup includes Aaron Hartman on upright bass, Ben Hartman on saxophone, and Germaine Bacca on drums). Produced by Steve Fisk, Catharsis in Crisis is the third and final installment in the band's self-proclaimed Lost Light Trilogy (preceded by 2004's Lost Light and 2005's 2012), and arguably their finest effort to date.
Scads of critics have already pointed out how, as a vocalist, de Dionyso seems to be deliberately channeling a less snickery Captain Beefheart (not a particularly shocking comparison, seeing as the band snatched its name from a Beefheart lyric)-- his pipes are scratchy and wild, spastic and loud, beguiling and gross. If you were to unfold the album's liner notes with hopes of clarifying some of the narratives shooting out of de Dionyso's piehole, you'd be treated, instead, to a series of six original line drawings of half-animal, half-human critters engaged in varied earthly pursuits. The fake-out is sort of appropriate: Old Time Relijun's narratives are based more in noise than language. The instrumental "Garden of Pomegranates", with its dark, garage-rock rhythms and freewheeling sax blows, is disorienting and intense; likewise, "Dark Matter" feels well-suited to the kinds of ominous highway drives that find you falling asleep at the wheel, head bobbing, car careening, body going limp. Vocals pop up about a minute before the song ends, and de Dionyso (the son of Methodist ministers) sounds more like a priest speaking in tongues than the leader of a Pacific Northwest indie band.
"Circular Ruins" is based on a short story by Argentine poet and writer Jorge Luis Borges, wherein a wizard attempts to create a young boy by dreaming him into existence; at the end of the story, the wizard realizes that he, too, is the result of another's person's dreaming. Over wonky guitar and taut drums, de Dionyso re-tells the wizard's story: "Night after night," de Dionyso warbles, voice popping, while his guitar shivers and squeaks. It's one of the record's most thrilling moments, throbbing and desperate. Old Time Relijun aren't especially listener-friendly, but it's worth battling through the all scum to get to the little glowing gems underneath: Catharsis in Crisis is a complex, fully-realized collection of songs.
