The members of the Portland, Oregon-based Grails may wish that reviews of their albums didn't always open with references to bong water and lava lamps. They are clearly serious musicians, after all, and though their music swims in 1970s head-rock signifiers-- reverbed guitar washes, droning sitars, and drum-circle bongos? Don't mind if I do!-- it builds momentum with an unforced grace and attention to detail that warrants more careful consideration than corny jokes about incense and beanbag chairs allow. But when you decide to name the opening track on your fourth album of warmly pulsing instrumental rock "Stoned at the Taj Again"-- well, you're just asking for it.
Actually, the stoner-rock tag probably wouldn't bother these guys much. They identify themselves on their MySpace page as-- gasp!-- a jam band, and thoughtfully name-check Pink Floyd right up front, so that we don't have to. The five long-form compositions that comprise Take Refuge In Clean Living all occupy more or less the same languorous headspace and blend together into a pleasantly hypnotic whole. But repeat listens reveal a sturdy musical intelligence upholding the entire affair, which is probably why an album this drowsy never once feels aimless. "Stoned at the Taj" builds slowly from a mammoth-sounding two-note synthesizer riff into some delicate pentatonic guitar noodling before the central motif, a hazy four-note sitar refrain, announces itself, and the track launches into a raga-rock rave-up that recalls the Byrds. (Throughout the album, it should be said, Grails demonstrate the effortless command of faux-Easternisms that only lifelong study of "Eight Miles High" and "Kashmir" provides.)
Elsewhere, Take Refuge offers a haunted cover of the Ventures' "11th Hour" that transforms cool surf-rock into windswept desert-rock via a cavern of reverb and an imperial harpsichord; the result could pass off as incidental music for David Lynch's Inland Empire. That air of dark mystery, which pervades the album, is partly due to the skillful arrangements, but also comes from the immaculate mastering and production, which makes heavy use of contrast and lends the appropriate air of otherworldliness. The best moments on Take Refuge in Clean Living resemble "a pinch felt in a dream," to quote another (far superior) album that takes place in a similar numinous middle distance: Perfect From Now On. Grails have been honing their spaghetti-western drone-rock for almost a decade, and have reached a point where they can skillfully fold just about any element into their ambient haze. To say that nothing stands out from the whole on Take Refuge is not so much an insult as it is an observation that Grails have succeeded in their aims, which is to create a full-length that flows uninterrupted from start to finish. There is something charmingly anachronistic about this goal, and it adds to the appealing sense that Grails exist in a kind of time warp. After all, it was never really considered "cool" to make this sort of music, but that hasn't stopped three or four generations of bands from turning down the lights and attempting to craft something resembling a soundscape. And there are moments here-- especially on the quietly gorgeous cello-and-piano coda "Clean Living"-- where Grails successfully transcend the trappings of their genre and tap into something truly celestial.
