There's something oddly comforting about the fact that Carl Sagan was a stoner. When young and in the throes of psychedelic experience, the mind automatically focuses on the heavens, wondering if it is really possible that, like, dude, check it: what if there's a whole universe like the one out there inside of a single blackhead? Sagan had this same experience at some point and ran with it; next thing you know, he's loading albums onto the Voyager probes for distant civilizations to rock to. (Fact: the Voyager probes, which will continue to move in a line away from Earth for the next 40,000 years, were outfitted with gold-plated turntables and records cut with sounds from Earth. Among the sounds are Chuck Berry's "Maybelene" and a greeting from Jimmy Carter. Sagan selected the tunes, making him by far the most out-there DJ of the pre-remix era.) Whatever powered Sagan's imagination, it should serve as inspiration for us all.
Like the Voyager probes, San Jose's Duster has been known to travel the spaceways. It's unclear if the root of it all lies in astronomy or neurology, and maybe it was just the song titles ("Moon Age," "Constellations," "Docking the Pod") or the Cold War-era reverb on the guitars, but Duster's first album evoked a slow, drifting journey through the void-- one to be taken in either a space capsule or a plush four-poster canopy bed. Contemporary Movement is something a little bit different.
While the band sees this as the album where they shed some excess guitar layering, move the vocals up in the mix, and focus on the songs, the sound here isn't all that different. True, there's nothing here nearly as abstract as the buzzing drone construction that was Stratosphere's title track, but Duster still has a way with the slow tempo and the beautifully distorted guitar noise. And from the first washed-out strum on "Operations," it's clearly Duster all the way.
No, the major change on this album is in bringing the thematic focus back to earth, over the mountains, through the city, and into the bedroom. Continuing a trend they began on their 1975 EP, Duster show some vulnerability and refuse to mask feelings in cosmic metaphor. For contrast, Duster's first 7" single, Transmission/Flux, featured a sad, dreamy song that repeated the refrain "all my friends are cosmonauts"; Contemporary Movement has a song that says, "Goddamn, I wish I was a little bit smarter" (on "Contemporary Breakups"). In the titles and lyrics, these are intimate songs about real emotion.
What carries these fragile (and easily mocked) sentiments across is the absolutely fucking gorgeous guitar music they're riding on. Ewing Parton and Canaan Amber (Duster's co-leaders) are wonderful musicians, though I doubt they could play with any real speed or dexterity, even if they wanted to. Their skill lies in finding the perfect guitar to go with just the right amp, so that the sound coming out of the speaker bears all the prickly warmth of your favorite wool sweater-- a tone so detailed you want to rub it between your fingers.
Parton and Amber can only sing three notes between them (and sometimes they miss one), so the melodies here have to be simple. This apparent limitation gives the melancholy tunes on Contemporary Movement a haiku-like clarity, and leaves plenty of gaps for the lovely chords to seep through. Aware of delicate humanity with their eyes trained on the stars, Duster has done Carl proud.
