Melodic Revolution 2023
WTF Was That?!
Building upon the base of liberty, Buckeye ensemble’s fourth album brings on fresh issues to the musical table.
While the whole world was undergoing a virus-related shift of idiom, this collective had their own fair share of changes, with flautist Ian Beabout’s family moving out of West Virginia for greener pastures and singing bassist Nathan James getting married, which made creating a successor to “Black Steeple Church” that was independently issued in 2021 a complicated prospect. “WTF Was That?!” didn’t seem destined to be their next platter and land on a proper label yet it did – and the sense of displacement its creators experienced also informed the record, even though it’s not disjointed despite some compositions on offer, the heavy titular jam included, originating on the trio’s previous effort. It’s just the listener can never know where any of its numbers leads in terms of stance or style – and here’s the beauty of the album.
It couldn’t be any more different from its rather contemporary-sounding predecessor, as the pieces gathered here more often than not relocate proto-prog from the past to the present, assigning this time-warp social consciousness and aligning James and Beabout’s voices – “The LSD No-No” sees the latter lay down his first lead – with the reeds and Derek Pavlic’s inflammatory guitar riffs. That’s why the angry unison of songs like “Flim-Flam Man” and “Lousy Smarch Weather” – whose subject, the loss of Ian’s childhood home due to coal mine, a reason behind his move to Ohio, is dark – are highly contagious; and that’s why the players felt the need to deconstruct the aforementioned title track and build the almost orchestral metallic filigree afresh. Such an approach allowed them to introduce to the record’s drift the faux idyll of the ivories-encrusted psychedelia of “Toy Soldiers” – which alludes to the Ukrainian war – and gradually increase the degree of the beautiful ballad’s belligerence. And then the ensemble pass the ATOMIC ROOSTER-templated menace over to the glockenspiel-adorned cover of REFESTRAMUS’ “Side Hustle” and to “Away” which attacks Christian fascism via acoustic chamber country, with viola, six-string strum and Mellotron creating a cosmic environment for honeyed vocal harmonies to harness.
But if the peal-announced instrumental “Palace Of Blood” and the synthesizers-driven, ruminative-to-unhinged epic “Sleeping Giant” assault political affairs as well, the former cut also solemnly and delicately – albeit shot through with an embossed bass line and featuring a spaced-out, raga-scented section – brings Ohio Valley folklore into the album’s flow for the punchy waltz of the aforementioned “The LSD No-No” and the wild, soul-inflected and funky, finale of “Mothman” to pick up and for the adventurous “SIMR” to get high on its chanted refrain and rage against the world’s injustice. The results are vertiginous – blissed-out and blessed in the music’s festive concern: let’s just hope the “was” in “WTF Was That?!” doesn’t mean this record is the group’s last.
*****
