The hurdy-gurdy never quite sounded like this before. Animal Collective multi-instrumentalist Brian Weitz is the final member of that experimental collective to release a solo album, and it’s a bizarre journey of oddball sounds and instruments looped through guitar pedal effects krautrock repetitive, meditational exploratory spirit, inhaled through the titular reference to his past as a smoker. The phrase is one he estimates he must have said thousands of times at retail outlets. But as for the album itself, this is jungle of experimental and traditional sounds, ritual moods, avant garde, prog-jazz, post-punk and warped folktronica, from the strums and animal whoops of Government Job, the dark, repetitive riffs (distorted hurdy-gurdy) bass and drums of Tonic, the atmospheric, energetising feel of the drive from Tucson into the desert near where he used to live, the pagan ritualistic dream-like feel of Pumpkin Festival, or the strange chimes of Shelley Duvall, to krautrock closer Sonora. It’s odd, at times challenging, overlong and indulgent, and is a piece of work based all about mood and atmosphere more than any meaning per se, but in this twilght world of Brian and friends, also strangely compelling. Out on Drag City.
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