A couple of months ago I was schlepping around YouTube looking for clips of bands I liked, and in the process I idly looked up San Francisco psych revivalists Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. And I noticed something interesting: Whether it was due to the sound setup at the band's venue or some limitations of the video or cell phone camera filming their show, many of them sounded almost violently distorted and loud. Even the ones that weren't still seemed like bracing experiences, body-tossing waves of lead-footed riffs and drumming that could dislodge rivets. Considering the forceful if limber heaviness of their previous two albums, their self-titled 2005 debut and 2007's Ekranoplan, that shouldn't be a big surprise. A noisy space-rock band? You don't say.
But When Sweet Sleep Returned might be the album that changes that whole dynamic. Despite their stoner-rock bonafides, Assemble Head have frequently found themselves on the edge of mellow, and this new album-- while still fairly powerful with the volume up-- seems to be reining in their more chaotic tendencies, with fewer blown-out serrated edges and more clean, open space. Tim Green, who engineered Ekranoplan (as well as albums by nu-acid rock vanguards Earthless and Comets on Fire), might have something to do with that, though the differences between the albums from a pure production standpoint are subtle-- the most noticeable effect being a somewhat less prominent bass rumble.
Yet for a group that immerses itself in much of the late 1960s/early 70s cusp-of-metal sound, Assemble Head never quite went far enough into the abyss of Sabbathoid doom that other stoner bands planted their flags in. You can imagine them cranking up Blue Cheer or Hawkwind every now and then, but they've also owed a fair amount to Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and even early Grateful Dead, more old-school hippie than proto-hesher burnout with each successive album. The lessened emphasis on early metal on When Sweet Sleep Returned is a mixed blessing-- previous records benefited from the caustic sonics Sweet Sleep lacks, but the cleaner, more bucolic sound reveals a band that, comparatively traditional-minded as they are, at least has a good handle on getting past clichés to burrow to the root of what made California psych and post-psychedelic rock work.
And that relies on the guitar tones of Charlie Saufley and Jefferson Marshall. Their strength isn't necessarily in fuzzed-out amplification, but in unpredictable versatility; all at once they can sound menacing and pastoral, leaden and ethereal, even if they seem to be cribbing from a wide array of 40 year-old blueprints. "By the Rippling Green" is the most immediate standout-- a two-layered melodic theoretical summit of John Fogerty rhythms and some of Neil Young's more low-key moments-- but it's not the most typical one. You might actually have a hard time pinning anything on this album as especially typical of anything else, actually: The riffs in "Two Stage Rocket" smoothly transition from 1966 to 69 Pink Floyd, "The Slumbering Ones" crossbreeds sprawling desert blues-rock with hints of a mutant strain of shoegaze, and the gentle hippiefied boogie rock of "Two Birds" slowly but surely expands and explodes into a solo-drenched peak that re-envisions Spiritualized as a jam band.
The funny thing is, even though the guitars are just as prone to twang as they are to growl, and even though the rhythms are often more floaty than heavy, there's no lack of power here. You just have to find it in unexpected places: While there's not a lot of squall and noise, there's still plenty of velocity, and the album thrives on uptempo tracks like the borderline alt-country "Kolob Canyon" and the fuzzed-out "Clive and the Lyre"; the latter song comes closest to showing some actual snarl, and exhibits Assemble Head's affection for fellow Nor Cal psychmongers Comets on Fire. The only real bummer with When Sweet Sleep Returned-- aside from the subjective fault of being "uninnovative"-- is the lyrical element; when the vocals aren't getting swept away along with the momentum, they're buried a bit low in an otherwise clean mix or distorted just enough to make every third word unclear. That's a shame, since what one can glean of them hints at a fascinating blend of post-apocalyptic dread and blissed-out reverie. But the music doesn't need to hint at that vibe-- it lays it out in Cinemascope panorama, fuzz or no fuzz.
