Spiral Shadow

Rather good Heavy Rawkin’ tunes from the veteran Savannah, GA band. Dual vocals, dual drums and of course of big guitars from Laura Pleasants & Phillip Cope. They jump from doomy rock to psych to even pop (!?). This is the most “straight ahead rock” album they’ve done. The changes in sound are definitely challenging. Still, their playing is almost always great even when the songs aren’t. Granted, they could use a lot less psych jams.

((((1))))) 1-2 tempo, with a bit of psych drift in the chorus but still mostly rockin’.
(((2))) Ambient intro, fuzz guitar, fast-psych noodling and weirdly enough comes off like their neighbors, Mastadon (who Kylesa has several years on). Weird.
((((3)))) Rumbling, then straight-ahead heavy rawk, with their usual dual vocals burst then psych drift (too much of it here, tho’) and back to the heavy rock-dual drums.
(((((4))))) Great opening riffs, very catchy, jumps around a lot in riffs but tends to stay the course more often than not.
(((((5))))) Sounds poppy, (?!) like the Pixies, even. It’s not super shiny though, as they’re talking about the doldrums of the fucked up “keeping up with the jones” life. Could’ve been a major hit on 120 Minutes?
(((6))) Drifting, psych noodling. Alright, already we get it!
((7)) (FCC “fucking” sung once@ 1:11) Slow 90s hard rock, actually kinda lame & boring-ass riff (conjures up Pearl Jam, yeesh). But Laura’s vocals sound good, albeit really poppy.
((((8)))) Heavy psych, slow burning with a solid rhythm, soaring vocals. The doomy bits are a nice change of pace.
((((9)))) Basic 90’s “stoner rock” riff though tuned higher. Airy poppy to all-out doom rawk. Laura’s voice sounds like Kat from Babes In Toyland which is a good thing. Interesting.
(((10))) Odd ball, Sonic Youth-y (!?) tones/structures with more psych-rock even some of the vocals sound like Thurston. WTF is this 1991?
(((11))) Low-down, spiraling, jammy, hazy psych rock. Lots of delay pedal, more noodling. Probably great live but here it’s just filling space.