Wooden Shjips
Dos

THE REVIEW

There are records that provoke conflicting feelings, if not opposing ones. Records that you love at certain moments and at other times would throw out the window. Perpetually torn between considering them genius works or enormous jokes. "Dos", the second creation from the Californians Wooden Shjips, is a typical example.

Young sprouts devoted to the psychedelic cult in its various incarnations (Velvet Underground - Doors - NEU! - Spacemen 3 - Loop, chronologically speaking), the Wooden Shjips are above all stoners, no doubt about it. I imagine them in the recording studio, completely out of it (you decide the substance, it’s all the same, I believe), getting stuck on the only bass and drum riff in "Motorbike", grinning idiotic and happy. And so practically for each of the remaining 4 tracks.

It might seem like a terrible presentation, but that is exactly what they do, and they've been doing it for at least a couple of records. Therefore, the merits or demerits of this music are almost all determined by agents external to it, whether altered mental states, personal tastes, listening context, or who knows what else. Never as in this case are you the determining factor.

Personally, I never would have thought that such a narrow and monolithic vision of psychedelia could fascinate me so much. I can't find a flaw in the band so far, simply because their limits are so evident that they fall outside of critical context. They stimulate my primordial hypnotic instincts, dormant residues of a Paleolithic past, all around the fire dancing among Mammoth skins and Smilodons lurking to get us.

Let's say the biggest shift from the previous one is a certain retrofuturistic vibe, a bit like Primal Scream of Xtrmntr (how great is that album??), a bit like visions of a present future, as in the early '80s cyberpunk. Hippies with their brains connected to the Ono-Sendai ("For So Long"), or reincarnations of a Lou Reed with Mirrorshades ("Fallin'")?

Unfortunately, they won't give you the answer, you'll have to find it by questioning yourself.