“I would hear riffs from bands that I liked, and I’d want them to keep playing that riff,” Dylan Carlson recalled recently. “I was always wondering what would happen if you just stuck on that one riff.” That such a simple idea could spawn a varied, lasting musical career seems impossible. Yet over three decades, Carlson’s band Earth have crafted a rich discography by doing just that. Early on, they stretched single chords into minimalist epics—inspired equally by La Monte Young and Black Sabbath—to coin a drone-metal style later perfected by descendents Sunn0))). But even as Earth’s sound has grown since returning from a late ’90s hiatus, Carlson remains infatuated with the power of repetitive riffs.
Though he and drummer Adrienne Davies have been constants in Earth Mk II, many musicians have flowed in and out of the group over the past 15 years. That culminated in 2014’s Primitive and Deadly, their first record to include vocals, courtesy of guests such as fellow Seattle veteran Mark Lanegan. Five years later, perhaps sensing their expansion had hit a ceiling, Carlson and Davies have finally made a record by themselves. Full Upon Her Burning Lips fits the cliché of the “stripped down, back to basics” album, with Carlson intentionally limiting his sonic options and the duo refocusing on elemental repetition. But Earth’s previous explorations earned them the right to reset, creating a new peak in an already highlight-filled discography.
Full Upon Her Burning Lips hits that upper echelon not just through signature repetition, but also the quality of the riffs themselves. Lately, Carlson has insisted that repetition by itself isn’t enough (“[the riffs] should be something that you want to hear again,” he said), and the range of memorable hooks throughout these ten tracks is indeed crucial. Take the wiry curve in “Cats on the Briar”, the hints of funky groove in “Exaltation of Larks,” the beatific circles in the meditative “Descending Belladona” and the poignant denouement “A Wretched Country of Dusk.” Full Upon Her Burning Lips might actually be more catchy than what many consider to be Earth’s best album, 2008’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull. Though the confident swing of these songs can feel contemplative or even languid, the duo’s knack for adding small shifts and subtle accents injects a lot of tension.
In that, credit is due to Davies’ drumming as much as Carlson’s guitar and bass playing. The way she both leads and supports the songs’ winding paths remains impressive, especially since they could easily drag. Her precision calls to mind drone legend Tony Conrad’s early epiphany that playing slowly is actually harder than playing fast, and “the secret of playing well was playing more slowly.” Davies has recently acknowledged the challenge “to get it as slow as you can get, but still have your momentum.” It’s a task she masters throughout So Full Upon Her Burning Lips, mixing serenity and accuracy into a force that both controls and propels Earth’s music.
That forward motion makes So Full Upon Her Burning Lips more than just a return to a classic sound. There are enough surprises here that what could’ve been just a comfortable glance backward. That’s clearest on “The Colour of Poison,” which opens with a rare Carlson move: chopping up chords rather than letting them ring out, which in the Earth universe counts as a seismic event. But a few minutes in, he turns back with a riff that ranks among the band’s most overtly Sabbath-styled. John Peel’s iconic assessment of the all-time kings of repetition, the Fall, is apt here: “They are always different, they are always the same.” It’s a big thing to say about any band, but in the 30 years since Carlson first struck an Earth chord, he and Davies have earned it.
