Deep Time

Description

Prairiewolf makes easy-to-listen-to music for an age of fracture. They do it almost despite themselves. No one can seriously question the musical good faith of the members of this Colorado-based trio. Guitarist Stefan Beck has already assembled a formidable discography of jewel-toned guitar zones under his Golden Brown moniker. Keyboardist and guitarist Jeremy Erwin and bassist Tyler Wilcox have both built their reputations as chroniclers of the vast world of non-music music. Erwin runs the indispensable Heat Warps blog, a performance-by-performance archive of Miles Davis’s labyrinthine electric period. And Wilcox has covered the irregular edges of psychedelia and experimental rock in Aquarium Drunkard and other publications, not to mention his own virtual basement for heads, the great bootleg blog Doom and Gloom from the Tomb. These guys do it honestly. And yet, given their backgrounds, Prairiewolf’s self-titled debut album last spring was remarkably free of face-melters, brown acid explosions, and ascending spiritual jazz odysseys. Instead, they put out a record of gorgeous, sleek, understated cosmic groovers that sounded like the background music of a resort hotel on Jupiter. It was improbable psychedelia, embroidered with mid-20th-century hi-fi-era sonic threads: vintage synthesizers, spaghetti western smears, lush tropical details, the slight schmaltz of space-age pop. Imagine something like a Harmonia residency in the airport lounge. And yet, somehow, it all worked beautifully. Prairiewolf became last summer’s recovery standard. After a year spent toiling in Colorado’s Front Range region, the boys in Prairiewolf fired up their trusty Korg SR-120 drum machine for another exceptional collection of suborbital exotica. The aptly titled Deep Time works on its own chronology, unfolding at its own slow pace. All of its incongruous stylistic and era references — new age pulses, Hawaiian steel, shaggy hippie ramblings, lysergic guitar spirals, and orchestral synth flourishes — float atop the album’s singular temporality. Deep Time creates its own time. From the moment Beck folds his slide guitar, origami-like, into a sound that resembles seagulls calling over the album’s tranquil opener, “Peach Blossom Paradise,” there is a sense of rupture from everyday life. The shimmering “Lighthouse” has a similar bronzed nonchalance, like an afternoon spent drinking in a seaside bar. The fact that they named their lush, kaleidoscopic downtempo track “The Meander” says a lot. The varied and propulsive “Saying Yes to Everything” feels like a nod toward the wookie krautrock brand of Rose City Band. And the black motorik of “Demon Cicadas in the Night” goes just as hard. The intertwined guitar jam between Beck and Erwin on the strange album cut “The Cold Curve” evolves into something that sounds like primitive computer music. A distinguished bass line from Wilcox on another album highlight, “Revisionist Mystery,” sets the stage for a looping space-jazz turn from guest clarinetist Matt Loewen of Rayonism. The title of the post-rock cowboy track “Another Tomorrow” could refer to the alternate future so many critics heard in the music on Prairiewolf’s debut album. Or it could simply refer to the persistence of time, however deep it may be. Either way, I’m grateful for the way Prairiewolf makes each of its tracks into a little oasis or sanctuary, each subsisting according to its own small crystalline logic for a few minutes. It is not simple to filter out the pervasive anger and anxiety of everyday life these days. But Prairiewolf is here, making it seem easy. -- Brent S. Sirota. --.