The Warlocks have always been the odd band out in the West Coast neo-psych scene, possessing neither the careerist conviction that earned the Dandy Warhols and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club heavy modern-rock-radio rotation, nor the sort of trainwreck volatility that would inspire someone to make a documentary about them (like their mentors the Brian Jonestown Massacre). But if the Warlocks have an image problem, it's one of their own design, given that they've sounded like a different band on every album, evolving from caveman garage-rock stompers (2000's Warlocks EP) to Floydian acid-folk pastorales (2001's Rise and Fall) to Spacemen 3-meets-Stones swagger (2002's The Phoenix Album) to jangly, Spectorized pop (2005's Surgery, the band's first and last release for Mute Records).
Heavy Deavy Skull Lover marks another distinct break from previous form, though this time the shift is symbolic as much as it is stylistic. With the more lushly produced Surgery failing to turn on any more heads than the band's primordial releases for Bomp! Records, the Warlocks have retreated to another niche label (stoner-psych specialists Tee Pee Records). And you don't have to look at the band's current press photo to realize that this once formidable octet has been downsized into standard quartet formation: Compared to previous releases, Heavy Deavy Skull Lover sounds noticeably more threadbare and fragile. Along the way, The Warlocks have seemingly sacrificed the two things that differentiated them from their peers: frontman Bobby Hecksher's easy-flowin' melodicism and the band's thunderous dual-drummer set-up. Instead of inspiring the band to sharpen their songwriting, the pared-down Warlocks strum and mumble through Heavy Deavy's eight sprawling tracks like a band waving the white flag.
The end goal here is The Cure: Live at Pompeii-- lo-fi dirges heavy on slow-motion distortion, but with Hecksher's usual stoned-out sighs replaced by more pronounced, mopey affectations. That the bookend tracks both feature the word "death" in the title offers some indication of the kind of mood he's in, and the pervasively dreary mood makes it hard to tell where the pained opener "The Valley of Death" ends and the quicksand-slow descent of "Moving Mountains" begins. Clocking in at over 10 minutes, the latter track gives off palpable echoes of Pink Floyd's "Echoes", with the band working a repeated four-note descending scale into a sludgy gruel, but to the point where even the song's accelerated four-minute closing passage provides little in the way of climax or resolve.
Heavy Deavy boasts a few moments that suggest Hecksher hasn't completely lost touch with the pop-song economy that produced past touchstones like "Song for Nico" and "Shake the Dope Out": "So Paranoid" faithfully adheres to a venerable My Bloody Velvets lysergic-lullaby template to winsome effect, and "Zombie Like Lovers" flashes back to the tribal goth-garage rave-ups of the band's debut EP. But if Heavy Deavy's superior songs confine themselves to well-trodden psych-rock territory, it's for the best really, as The Warlocks' more outré maneuvers ultimately go nowhere: the backward-looped "Interlude in Reverse" is three minutes of inconsequential squall, while the burnt-spoon fever dream of "Death, I Hear You Walking" approximates nothing so much as the sound of Hecksher nodding off on the couch while a late-night telecast of Zabriskie Point turns to white noise. Strangely, this is the only song where Hecksher actually sounds content-- maybe he's stoned; maybe he's amused by the title's accidental pun on Kiss' "Beth, I hear you calling"; or maybe after five albums and as many changes in direction, he's given up trying to please anybody. But if this is the way The Warlocks' world ends, you just wish they had delivered more bang for your whimper.
