by roving reporter thornswrath
the eagerly and long awaited new album from Dax Riggs, 7 songs for spiders, released on Fat Possum Records, arrived at my doorstep today breaking a fifteen year silence since Say Goodnight To The World dropped back in 2010. That's the year I got married, on April Fool's, following my heart like I always do.
Boy does this album deliver the goods and live up to the hype.
It's everything any die hard could have ever dreamed and more so. If you know, you know. This album belongs on the perfect soundtrack for our endtimes, along with agents of oblivion, deadboy and the elephantmen, and the veritable resurgence of a new punk revolution as the terrestrial gears shift into the new post-political paradigm of Earth with the shattering intensity brought upon us by the technological singularity. We've made it this far so you know together we can pull through anything the great and sinister unknown may throw at us. In the meantime this record, at a short running length of 28 minutes, is just what the doctor ordered in terms of what our highest expectations could bring.
I'm happy to include a brand spankin' new album in my 30 albums challenge, so yes in case you're among the lost legion who never heard of acid bath or dax riggs, this album is a modern day masterpiece and was just released today, I preordered it and it arrived with impeccable timing. the stars lined up for me again, boy am I not surprised. This is the only daks album that I haven't had him sign, yet. Just wait'll he comes to Salt Lake, I hope he hits up Aces High because that would be perfect. Hope to see you there. I'll try and work my underground booking sorcery and get him to tour with IV & the Strange Band or something.
A new cycle of the same ol' same ol' begins. Best strap in. We're in for one helluva ride. Don't follow the bouncing ball, people. Stay focused on your own life, your own dreams. Everything has always been not as it seems, and it's no different today. Step away from all the screens and live your best life. Hang on to yourself or your significant other or wife.
As good ol' Billy Yeats once said:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. . .
That haunting opening melody that starts off the second track, Sunshine Felt the Darkness Smile, captures perfectly the short, sharp shock of spirit this album injects into the scene.
It's really something to hear him singing with a full band backing in a perfect complementary manner, lush and velvety enough to be felt getting swallowed by the darkness, with exactly the amount of haunted reverb and cascading tremulous lines dropping like ripened fruit from the gathering shadows of a darkening garden. The moon's prevalent over this familiar courtyard of desolate tunes, yet there's that underlying defiant hope that saturates these blues, the lingering spirit of having survived leaves an echoing impression that we may have actually just been haunted by a ghost. It's what records are when you stop and think about it deeply enough. The ghosts of John Lennon and David Bowie are kept alive in the shiny reflective depths of grooved vinyl records. The exquisite vibrations captured with infinitesimal detail separating the sound of Beethoven from Pink Floyd reveals an astonishing variety of sonic terrain, the music of the spheres divided into microtones.
After spinning 7 songs for spiders, I don't know in a sort of unattachment from the experience, as if I were removing a suction tight sealed scuba mask and shaking out from under the weight of the tank, a gasp of clean air and I realized I was crying, an emotional tide from having just listened to daks.
I went ahead and flipped it back to side A and began the seven songs all over again. deceiver is a great tune to start it all, a perfect little carousel ride into Dax's nocturnal dream world.
When Graveyard Soul begins, that's it, when he sings you lost your junkyard smile, it captures the spirit of my own memory of who I was back in my twenties discovering Boston and the strange hyperactive rhythms interacting with all my friends and the Grubs that got caught up in our underground society. You know, I owe this musical discovery to none other than my dear friend Gareth Allen, he turned me onto Acid Bath back when I lived three doors down from him on Douglas St, all of twenty years ago. When The Kite String Pops remains to this day among the very few most impactful albums in my long life of obsessing over rock and roll music. Not only is it the meanest, rawest, most primal and stripped down sounding band in the land, but there's a psychedelic soulfulness to their unleashed fury that in my view remains pretty unmatched to this day. And I've always appreciated all of Dax's side projects and sojourns. From seeing him perform as deadboy & the elephantmen all those years ago at Club Sound in the back of Bricks with Wolfmother and maybe Pelican, I can't exactly recall offhand.
It's good to have him back, and to know Acid Bath are going to give it a go. This year's kicking off to a delirious start. I've seen a few reels of Sammy and Dax and them getting pumped up to play, so I hope they got a good positive energy going together and manage to keep it together, committing to at least another couple of years or three of touring smaller dive venues across the land just waiting to book them. Aces High Saloon here in Salt Lake City for example would be the perfect place. Or S&S Productions could book them at the Urban Lounge or Club Metro. I managed to get Cancerslug booked at Aces High last year, and then they happened to land on Valentines Day, here. What are the chances.
I told you the stars always line up for me so I'm going to email S&S Presents and Aces and see if I can get a show with Cancerslug, IV & the Strange Band and Dax Riggs, because that would be the trifecta for me, like some voodoo magic borne of the raw quantum chaos of my mind control.
