There are at least two ways to look at a guitar riff-- as a building block for a song, or as an end in itself. Ryland Wharton, aka King Blood, has taken the latter viewpoint to a mesmerizing extreme. On Eyewash Silver-- originally released in a tiny edition in 2010-- he treats fuzzy guitar riffs not simply as ends, but as mantras to be chanted and monuments to be worshiped. Each track offers one simple figure devoutly repeated, as if musical nirvana is always just one more riff away.
If I'm making Eyewash Silver sound too solemn or reverent, don't worry-- it's also a lot of fun. Wharton's clanging chords never feel dry or studied. Instead they're charged with an impulsive exuberance. Often it sounds like he came up with a guitar loop right before he hit record on his four-track, and was so excited that he didn't want to waste another second before churning away. That feel is enhanced by muddy, static-drenched production. The album drips with overload, creating a raw, gut-level immediacy. The idea behind each song is delivered unwashed and unrefined.
In that sense, Eyewash Silver reminds me of Neil Young, particularly his solo guitar soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's 1995 existential western Dead Man. Wharton's songs aren't nearly as sparse or forlorn as Young's score, but both share a near-anthropological fascination with the primal force of repeated notes. (Besides, the swinging hooks of "Poison in Jest" and "Sinfull Woman" sound extracted and extended from Crazy Horse tunes). You'll hear other reference points throughout Eyewash Silver-- the noisy wash of Japanese bands like Fushitsusha and Les Rallizes Denudes, the motor-garage of Wooden Shjips, and, on the near-perfect "End of a Primitive", the classic amp-melt of great Velvet Underground bootlegs. But I keep coming back to Young and his exploratory wanderings, a standard to which Wharton measures up well.
The only flaw you might find in Eyewash Silver is the claustrophobic effect its relentless distortion can create. Sometimes after I've listened to it repeatedly, it's taken me a while to shake the feeling that I'm wearing earmuffs. But this also gives the album a world-apart feel-- it's unlikely you'll get distracted by anything else while this album is on. Besides, even if you can't bear to hear King Blood over and over, one listen to its echoing riffs might make you feel like you have.
