Always August - 1987 - Largeness With (w)Holes

Always August

1987

Largeness With (w)Holes

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01. Mass Man 6:30

02. Watton's Bluff 4:30

03. Alien-Nation 3:20

04. In The Dark 4:53

05. Krypto 3:05

06. About Time 7:20

07. Rahsaan Rollin' Cat 4:05

08. It's A Wheel 5:01

Bass – Tim Harding (2)

Congas – Splash Mathews

Drums – Jeff Douglas

Guitar – Lee West (2)

Guitar, Voice – John Kiefer

Saxophone, Bass, Recorder – Tom Wall

Trombone – Brian Zabriskie

Trumpet, Synthesizer, Keyboards, Flugelhorn – Jon Mela

Violin – Steve Gutowski

On their second release, this Virginia-based nonet continues to explore a genre that hip '70s rock-crits pejoratively dubbed jazz-rock. But fear not, this is no Berklee-bred BS&T chops-arama: it's more heady, swirling, quietly funkified stuff that only occasionally commands your attention. The problem is some of the instrumental passages are just plain boring, meandering when they should be stomping. Still, there's enough interesting stuff here ("Krypto" and "Rahsaan Rollin' Cat"), but as for this bag, it's definitely mixed.

Very much underrated mid 80s psych rock. Not too many 80s trappings here, the playing is often quiet loose and free-form...not overly-produced. The opener Mass Man, is probably my least favourite track on the album, it's more pop-funk than the rest...so it only gets better from here, imho. Walton's Bluff is an excellent loose psych jam with violin. Into the Dark, is a very fine track...gives me the feeling of staggering back home from some random nightclub at 3am. About Time, is another fine track. These guys were obviously inspired by 60s West Coast psych, Quicksilver, It's A Beautiful Day et al. But not to such an extent that it prevented them from developing their own style or merely being copycats. There's some horns, and a slight funk undercurrent going on. Normally horn rock is not to my tastes, but they fuse it well with their psychie guitar noodlings, and plenty of violin. Hopefully these guys will be discovered one day, they're well worth a listen! :-)

Every album these guys put out was good, and this might very well be the best. These guys are like something straight out of 1972 and they have some great spaced out tunes with a real Grateful Dead kind of groove about them. Yup it's a fine thing.

Aaaaaaaaahhh, the SST label.. The best years of our lives, right ?