There's so much to fear in New York right now: Fed-Exed nukes from North Korea, low-grade Uranium shavings cast from the top of the Empire State building as cheapo fallout, a smallpox outbreak carried through the subway tunnels it was hard enough climbing stairs thinking \x93Any moment now, I could slip and break my neck.\x94 And yet, as I dwell on the unlikely finality of that snap, the supposedly impending revolution care of New York City's No-Neck Blues Band is one thing I'm not particularly worried about, even as they haunt my dreams in Mysterio clouds of sulfur and patchouli smoke, their satchels filled with obscure Don Cherry records, poisonous berries, and bearded songster scores found in dumpsters outside rehearsal spaces.
\x93Witch\x94 eases things open with great haunted promise, snaking its way up the river between Apocalypse Now-era Rhythm Devils and the Doors' distended psychedelic menace, writhing and enticing great reptilian figures to surface, their faces slick with mud. \x93Play Your Play\x94 comes on in home-stitched priest gowns, the trails and runners wavering in and out of the physical realm as cloth drags along the ground, taking a few minutes to really get to the tom-tapped ceremony of accordion and organ drones, slowly attaining a chilled plateau they sustain for nearly twelve minutes. The sprawling \x93The Shepherd Takes a Shine to the Abyss\x94 that closes the album is the most exquisite exploration of the bunch, and as beautiful as anything they've ever conjured up. Building from spider-silk strands of cello and acoustic bass, its lightly delayed guitars slowly coalesce to stand upright, merging the bratty sax bleats into a wholesome peace.
But the magic and smokescreens run out of steam in the middle of the record: \x93Open That Grass Cax94 begins to piddle and plink, revealing bored revelers behind their renaissance wardrobe, their rope-and-wood machines petering then falling apart. The title track only has its punny name going for it, a dorm-sponsored, smoke-out drum circle; \x93This Absent-Minded Crisis?\x94 is two minutes of baby babble even Yoko Ono couldn't entertain.
\x93Fuck-No\x94 at least has the good sense to steal Sun Ra's cosmically therapeutic drum reverb, guaranteeing lift-off, but the captain comes out of the cabin dressed like an orangutan from a novelty calendar, making oogy-googy noises in utter disdain for Ra's muumuu. Twelve minutes in, pecked notes and monkey-scat-- not to mention a wooden train whistle-- thoroughly derail the piece.
While a small beam of light fell upon their Harlem loft with a record they wrangled out on John Fahey's Revenant label-- earning critical accolades from high places-- the group remains relatively obfuscated, rarely playing shows and splintering into multiple personalities to obscure their different trails. Their early releases are pure handmade loveliness, sheathed in mystifying, artful packages, the music mashing together Cromagnon, Alan Sondheim, Father Yod, and other privately-pressed wax icons to the point where picking apart their influences became a futile exercise in bogus alchemy. Each was its own potent dose, and full gnosis was never quite possible when absorbing them; unfortunately, Intonomancy is a shoddier stone tablet, a wearisome simplification of their decade-old primitivism. Their music, now much more clearly recorded, finally reveals itself more sloth than Thoth.
