Legalize it and so forth, but drug-takers gotta realize something: it is a supremely selfish act, taking drugs. Navel-gazing is one thing; taking a picture of said navel and posting it to your Tumblr with Blingees 'cuz it gave you a giggle, far different. Who knows what Los Angeles' Warlocks do with the black light on; all we have are their records, and The Mirror Explodes is the fifth proper. It may not be drug-induced, though it's certainly sticky with the resin of said creativity vehicle; this is a druggy album.
The Velvet Underground, once and always the template for most drug-rock worth its salt, are still the Warlocks' godhead, along with the swampier, swirlier moments of their fellow drag-chasers Kevin Shields and the brothers Reid. I realize it's reductive to suggest Mirror sounds like Kev playing the "Loomer" riff over "Black Angel's Death Song", but it's only reductive as that would be more awesome than this record turns out to be. Still, it's an equation they (and, to an even dronier extent, the Black Angels) have made a career of; they did, after all, have a tune called "Song for Nico" on their debut, and here we are eight years later.
Ironically, "Song for Nico" sounds like Big Star compared to Mirror, a record that picks a mood-- dark-- and sticks with it. The earlier Warlocks records played with space and tempo in a way Mirror casts aside in favor of front-to-back stoney, reverby sludge. Oddly enough, I'm reminded of a recent quote I read attributed to somebody or other from recently rejuvenated big beaters the Prodigy, suggesting that years 'round the bong had left him, however temporarily, with "no personality." I can't help but wonder whether that's the culprit for why Mirror feels so drab and tuneless, an album whose heavy lids bespeak a fairly narrow vision.
It's tough to get a hold on this record, since it's somewhat averse to melody or much shading beyond "gray and slightly deeper gray." A few tunes sway where others swarm, but they're all bathed in such fuzz it's a drag to differentiate. There are moments-- like the guitar flutter in the set's rockiest rocker, "Frequency Meltdown", or the pull of the Jesus and Mary Chainsaw around "Slowly Disappearing"-- that pop out a bit, but the album does precious little to distinguish between tracks, let alone between itself and the work of other bands. Certainly the Warlocks at their most monochromatic, whereas in the past it seemed as though they couldn't help but bring a little light in. If they were going for "bummed out in a basement", well, they got it, but as in real life, that tends to be interesting only to those who made the trek down the stairs themselves.
This is where the selfishness thing comes in; Mirror never goes far out enough to be "self-indulgent" per se, but it does seem wrapped up in its own little bubble, and penetrating that is actually something of a chore. There's little dynamism in the arrangements, nothing particularly revelatory about the mostly-mumbled lyrics, and certainly nothing original about adding a fresh coat of black paint to the house that John Cale built. It'd be one thing if prolonged exposure to the fuzz resulted in a better understanding of these songs, but they're just as bleary on the first listen as the tenth, and they wind up sounding like somebody else's bad time, but not really one you'll want to call your own. Druggy records are never all that good when they don't convey anything about the experience other than the blur. That's not to say you couldn't get swept up in The Mirror Explodes' churn under the right influence, but it's not something to inspire the formation of many new memories.
