(Excerpt by Jennifer Kelly)
Hal Lambert and Mitchell Mobley unleash the long drones on this third full-length collaboration (the first two came out on Lambert’s own label Tentative Spring). The two musicians come from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which seems like an unlikely hub for experimental music, but there you go. Lambert is primarily a guitarist, though he also plays some banjo, while Mobley is mostly a drummer.
When you say it like that—extended improvised drones on guitar and drums—you might naturally think of 75 Dollar Bill, but the music sounds only tangentially similar. Where 75 Dollar Bill dives into deep African cadences, Lambert and Mobley seem more interested in mind-bent country forms. “Emmy Lou,” is blues-based in the most down-home and American of ways, before it blasts off into the stratosphere. There’s nothing desert-ish about it. And where 75 Dollar Bill stretches out its sound with rough cut bowed tones, these two lace their jangling, rattling interplay with organ drones. The drums are different, too, Mobley’s crisper and more antic than Brown’s resounding box thumps. He skitters over the smoke-hazed tones of “Cross the Lazy River” on martial snare cadences, like a marching band percussionist gone transcendental.
Lambert is known for playing his guitar in non-traditional ways, using screwdrivers and other odd implements to re-imagine the instrument’s sounds. “Lines in the Dream House Bathroom” seems like it might exemplify that unboxed-in approach; it harnesses feedback the way a chariot driver keeps his horses in line, driving it, whipping it, urging it forward. The drums here are especially visceral too, thwacking hard to punch through the wall of sound.
My favorite, cut, however, comes last in the serrated glory of “Honey Yogurt,” which is, by far, the most rock track on the album. It bashes and lurches and tramples everything in its way, a fuzzy cataclysm worthy of Crazy Horse. It’s not especially experimental sounding, just loud and thrilling and visceral. For a duo that has just spent 45 minutes deconstructing guitar music, it seems almost conventional (but great, did I also say great?) Maybe you have to turn guitar music inside out to understand it.