Heaters
Baptistina

When I want to listen to something good, I mean: when I want to play it safe, I always go back and search for every record released by 'Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Records,' a Brooklyn label that in my opinion never misses a beat. About them, Clash Magazine wrote, 'The Brooklyn label is rapidly building what can be described as an international reputation. The typical imprint of the bands on the label's roster is full of dreamers, wanderers, losers, and people trying to make it, in any case, all people who live on the fringes of society and who try to fight it using guitars, drums, voices, and electricity.'

A description that I consider fantastic and that makes me want to end this review here, without even proceeding to say something about this record, since the description of the label's releases, and consequently also of this latest work by Heaters, was so precise and fitting. A label that, however, although still constitutes a small entity, in recent years has released, just to mention, the Myrrors, Jeffertitti's Nile, the Japanese bands Sundays & Cybele and Kikagaku Moyo. As well as obviously the Heaters, a trio of psycho-surf rock that I discovered last year after listening to their first LP, 'Holy Water Pool,' which immediately struck me for being an impactful record, a power-pop that I want to describe as 'fresh and clean,' and due to a certain cosmic approach to the psychedelic material.

The new album, the latest, 'Baptistina,' was released last August and appears right away as a very unique and interesting work. Already from the image depicted on the cover, which mixes elements and a symbolism typical of the seventies psychedelia and rock with a certain dark culture and 'comic book' style of the eighties and the usual reference to skeletons and the 'world of death' that became a must after the boom a few years ago of the Dead Skeletons. In practice, anyway, we have this kind of upside-down world where on a gigantic inverted moon sits what could be a giant duck or a kind of sphinx, while a skeleton is sinking head down upwards into a stormy sea made of electrified wool. In short, wow!

Clearly, everything I said about 'Holy Water Pool,' also applies to the sound of 'Baptistina,' except for the fact that in this new LP, the band, coming from Grand Rapids, in the great state of Michigan, you know, the one of Robert Redford, shows new maturity and significant improvements in the sound and in the song writing. Someone has compared them to Flying Saucer Attack, a band I consider gigantic, and a comparison that can stand to some extent even though the Heaters are definitely more 'pop' and sometimes even 'surf' (see 'Mango,' 'Elephant Turner') and easier listening compared to the band founded by David Pearce. On the other hand, it is undeniable that there are still very cosmic and experimental moments on this record, 'Dali' for example is certainly a space-song in the style of that great and fundamental band from Bristol, which were the Flying Saucer Attack.

What I mainly want to emphasize about the sound of this record is the hypnotic effect that comes from listening and the surrealism that permeates most of the songs. 'Centennial,' 'Ara Pacis,' the eight minutes of 'Garder Eater' are psychedelic songs with a typical garage flavor that since the origins has been and remains a typical element of this band despite any possible experimentalism and revolutions. Small vibrant and electric portraits of a blurred reality that is impossible to grasp and touch with hands, as if it swirled around us like a vortex and we are in the middle and see everything spinning around us at an indeed 'ungraspable' speed.

The record ends with three tracks that somehow diversify from the main contents of the record. 'Voyager' and 'Turkish Gold' are both parts of an ideal soundtrack of what could be defined as a virtual meditative state, culminating in an ideal ascension accompanied by a growing and engaging sound of electronic organ. Finally, 'Seafoam,' a typical garage rock and roll song, a final shock before the end of this experience.

It may probably seem that there is too much going on in this record and that it is composed of too many elements and perhaps different from each other, but if you give it a listen, which I highly suggest, you'll notice that things are not as simple as they might appear. After all, it is difficult to describe well what is so rarefied and visionary, strong and determined in tones, and at the same time so complicated because it's experimental and especially surreal. Quoting the Spanish painter and artist Joan Miró, 'I feel the need to reach maximum intensity with the minimum of means and representations that I can create. It was this that led me at the end of a long process to give my painting a character of true nudity.'

So let's all strip down, ideally free ourselves of everything that covers and hides us, and throw ourselves together into the vortex of the hurricane.