Quasi - American Gong

Quasi

American Gong

(Kill Rock Stars)

Rating: 3.3 of 5

Exit distorted organs. Enter distorted guitars. As if raising a toast to post-Bush America, Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have constructed a new album with less political bile and more druggy mooniness. Employing the multi-talents of Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme, a now permanent fixture, Quasi flipped-switch and piled American Gong high with somewhat off-kilter, rock trio song craft to marry the archetypal hallucinatory fuzz and throbbing electrification.

Having been around for seventeen years, Quasi won’t be sending anyone by the wayside with this assortment of drudged-up jams. Sam Coomes, as if playing Neil Young’s legendary Old Black, can be imagined positioning his guitar in front of the amp cab for bonus incendiary feedback. Joanna solidifies the melodies with tasteful fretwork, herself. Janet behind it all—pounding away with precise Bonham-owing meter.

Certainly featuring a blowout start to the recording, American Gong’s “Repulsion” and “Little White Horse” relent to the world-weary “Everything & Nothing At All” and the poppier chorus of “Bye Bye Blackbird”. But just when everything is all fine and dandy, a flop like “Now What” or “Death Is Not The End” stinks of overcompensation. Or, maybe, it stems from a lack of focus. Even the promising bombast of “Black Dogs & Bubbles” is a bit too lengthy to stomach.

Asinine lyrics accompanying the acoustic inclusions on Gong, “Rockabilly Party” brings a resurging spark toward the end of the tracking; only to be quelled by the decent upshot—the ironically-subdued “Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler” (Cajun French for ‘Let the Good Times Roll’). Trace influences of contemporaries Built To Spill, and even a little Earlimart this time around, are of note.

While fans of these madcaps might prefer to turn to their more lo-fi successes than to the refurbished razzle-dazzle captured here, Quasi makes believers of them with two or three winners—even when they seem most unlikely to do so.