Thanks to the recent success of such diverse tonebenders as Sunburned Hand of the Man, The Major Stars, Black Forest/Black Sea, Comets on Fire, Six Organs of Admittance, and the bands in the Jewelled Antler collective, "psychedelic" pops up everywhere and nowhere: The descriptor encompasses one too many stylistic paths to function as anything more than a meaningless catch phrase. Unlike the easily corralled fuzz addicts ensconced in the monolithic grunge pantheon, you really ought to modify "psych" to make it work.
Enter The Gris Gris. They don't wrap their music in nature-friendly drone, the white-eyed haze of noisy star-melting sprawl, or the autumnal cartwheels of lo-fi acid-folk; instead, they drape themselves in classy, gauzy atmospherics that gurgle with small-scale, somehow gentle freak-outs and downcast hooks.
The Gris Gris are Bay Area residents but their take on the 60s is miles apart from most of San Francisco's candle melting mystics. The band's Oakland-via-Texas frontman Greg Ashley is more Musician magazine magpie than Harry Partch channeler. Tellingly, while the band's name does connote a so-called "iron-fisted" form of voodoo ceremonials, the more earthbound Ashley grabbed the term from Dr. John's first record rather than a magic talisman.
Recorded on an 8-track machine with half-inch tape in a three-room cement basement, the strongest aspect of this debut is its authentic mustiness. The group bows at a dark pantheon-- the spirits of Roky Erickson, The Electric Prunes, Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett, and The Rolling Stones all make appearances. Staying closer to the present, consider The Gris Gris a less cryptically insular Brother JT with a penchant for Galaxie 500.
Unlike their forefathers' black-lit laboratories, the quartet often feels emotionally vacant. It's not that the words are fatuous, clunky, embarrassing, or overwrought-- they just kinda are. Even during Ashley's most baroquely reverb-bathed lamentations, he best locates his emotional mojo in his guitar pick rather than his run-of-the-mill sentiments. This isn't necessary a death-knell; the fluidity of his musicality is detailed enough to fill those gaps with a squall of melancholy sounds: minor chords, rapturous feedback, ghostly organ. But, hey, as Extreme wisely put it back in the day, sometimes other things can be more valuable than words.
For instance, Ashley and crew possess the skills to uncover pleasing results when they wander over hills of non-vocal music. There, some of The Gris-Gris' compositions are allowed the space to ramble: The eight-plus minute "Raygun" could continue the lonesome path of its first two minutes ad infinitum if Ashley felt the need; instead, it rocks loose from a This Is Our Music guitar/voice jangle, raising a bubbling, flanging ruckus, like an crumbling aircraft ascending from a rusted silo. It's the sonic equivalent of a contact mic making out with a jar of silly string. "Me Queda Um Bejou" opens with a bluster until it drops a step and becomes a lovely Portuguese enchanter, a moody blue come-on that, at its midpoint, slides along a melodic saxophone. The incidental piece, "Plain Vanilla", blends castanets and string plucks to create windy circus music trapped in a hurricane. "Best Regards" flinches and fizzles with the nervous energy of The 13th Floor Elevators until Ashley begins some sort of dark cloud exorcism to the fore-- and, again, once he stops talking, the guitar theatrics really take off, this time screeching, drilling, and howling over a tight, distant rhythm section.
But in the end, even those pale, cascading salvos just aren't enough to sustain interest. A number of tunes glisten, but as you grow familiar with the aura, the more it fades. Ultimately, I want to loop the best moments and pretend Ashley doesn't return to break what's left of the spell. A songwriter needn't be a literary lion but in this case, the lack of a back story, esoteric insight, charmed charisma, or soothsayer actualization renders The Gris Gris, more or less, a solid bar band with a great list of influences.
