Wooden Shjips - 'Vol. 1' (Holy Mountain) Released 16/06/08

Anyone assuming psychedelia equals sterling technical chops employed in the service of twiddly solos and ensemble performances of disorientating complexity is in for quite a surprise with ‘Vol. 1’. For much of Wooden Shjips’ second full-length offering, organist Nash Whalen plays as if his fingers are glued to the same droning chord, whilst bassist Dusty Jermier refuses to change the riff he’s plucking once a suitably funky one has been located.

In lesser hands, such dedication in repetition would result in mind-numbing monotony. Wooden Shjips, though, mould their chosen references – the doped-out drones of Spaceman 3, the elemental aggro and wheezy organ sounds of ‘Nuggets’ vintage garage rock, the motorik magic of Neu!, the contemporary psych-rock variations of Comets on Fire and Deerhunter, a drop of the Doors, a hint of Velvets, a slice of the Stooges - into heady, mind-expanding hypnosis that chooses unstoppable momentum over druggy torpor. Comparing music to dope got old ages ago. Yet the hazy grooves and debilitated drones dished out on this overhaul of impossibly rare, long out of print singles sound so thoroughly pharmaceutically enhanced the San Francisco four-piece’s product makes the uppers, downers, laughers and screamers-guzzling Raoul Duke of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ fame seem like a particularly sober proponent of the ‘Just Say No’ campaign, so much so the CD should arrive equipped with warnings about driving or operating heavy machinery whilst under its influence.

The throbbing eight-minute opener ‘Shrinking Moon’ (from the band’s debut EP from 2006) and the trance-inducing, 11-minute outer space garage-skronk opus ‘SOL ‘07’, for example, pack the heady punch of the most potently acid-warped jams churned out by San Francisco’s late-60’s psych-improv pioneers, only with the era’s favoured jazz-tinged 12-bar blues sludge swapped for an insistent single-chord drone, deadpan vocals and Erik “Ripley” Johnson’s shrieking, feedback-encrusted guitar emissions which provide an intoxicating aural equivalent of red-hot lava rolling down the side of an erupting volcano.

‘Clouds Over Earthquake’ threatens to evolve into ‘Whole Lotta Love’, but wounds up sticking with the first two chords after chomping the contents of the medicine cabinet instead. Best of all is the slow-motion space voyage of 2007 single ‘Dance California’, which provides a superlative snapshot of the krautrock heaven a harmonious summit between Ash Ra Temple axe-shredder Manual Göttsching and an unusually robust Harmonia could’ve produced. Only a couple of lesser B-sides – the baffling spoken word collage of ‘Space Clothes’, reminiscent of Can at their most inscrutably out-there, must have been a giggle to put together, but the fun doesn’t quite get through to the listener – break the spell weaved by the explosive, high-octane thrills contained here.