Matthew O\u2019Neill wants to blow your mind\u2014or at least crack it open and pour in a potent mind-meld of early Pink Floyd space-rock, Jerry Garcia-esque laid-back roots music, and Native American-inspired earth-and-sky spirituality. (And funk. Do NOT forget the funk.)<\/p>\n
Singer-songwriter-guitarist-environmental crusader O\u2019Neill and a team of fellow travelers set out on a journey across the continent here, exploring landscapes that seem both grounded and surreal, singing songs of the earth even as the music sends them all tripping high into the atmosphere. <\/p>\n
Opener \u201cBridge Builder\u201d starts on high churn and builds from there, a psych-funk number whose crunchy thump is tamed only by O\u2019Neill\u2019s laconic vocals, unexpected horn accents and a gospel background chorus. It\u2019s a trippy, intense ride (\u201cI\u2019m going back upstream \/ To another dream\u201d) that makes a range of musical promises that the rest of the album proceeds to keep. <\/p>\n
The gently picked little guitar riff at the core of \u201cGolden Boy\u201d is as sunny as that title implies, set off by distorted slide notes, looming organ and O\u2019Neill singing soothingly of explorers: Vikings and Cherokees and Pilgrims. Here and in one or two other places on the album he manifests a touch of Neil Young in his vocals, a keen that\u2019s almost a second voice in itself. Skipping like a rock across a pond\u2019s surface, \u201cAin\u2019t No Way\u201d takes more of a chiming alt-country feel, but slumbery and off-kilter and adding soul-tinged background vocals; it\u2019s like early \u201970s country-rock on mescaline.<\/p>\n
The Meddle<\/i>-era Pink Floyd influence comes on strong with the dark \u201cPoisoning The Well,\u201d featuring stabbing Gilmouresque riffs and an anguished vocal that finds O\u2019Neill adding David Byrne to his influences as his vocal becomes an intense, at-times almost atonal soliloquy that contrasts rather than complements the song\u2019s melody. \u201cGates\u201d sums up the vibe here in a single phrase, \u201cpsychotic dismay,\u201d on a tune that feels like a dreamy, mellow Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n
The sweeter-toned \u201cLouisiana\u201d delivers a slinky, jazzy, slightly loopy feel, like Steely Dan after four or five shots of tequila, with a soaring, echoey guitar solo that again channels Gilmour. The sleepy-eyed country-rock returns for \u201cStand Tall\u201d before the scene devolves even further. <\/p>\n
The second half is all over the map tonally, from the mystical tribal chant feel of \u201c1000 Years\u201d to the straight-up honky-tonk country rock of \u201cBreakstride.\u201d As the former unfolds you imagine firelight reflecting off dancing bodies as the flame flickers in the dead of night; the latter sounds like classic Wilco weirdness, right down to the 1:56 run time. \u201cTelepathy\u201d has a similar fragmentary feel, a brief hallucination that collapses in on itself two minutes in. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlzheimer\u2019s Blues\u201d opens as a sort of raunchy blues-rock with more Byrne influence on the vocals, full of elastic vowels over chunky blues-riffing. \u201cThere You Go Again\u201d tucks a soul-jazz horn line inside a loose, spaced-out main arrangement. Meanwhile, late highlight \u201cTonkashila\u201d offers an echoey, foreboding anthem whose primal feel and lumbering cadence inspire visions of the Cowboy Junkies covering \u201cImmigrant Song.\u201d <\/p>\n
Closer \u201cRe-Launching\u201d opens with clean, sunny chords, a breath of fresh air that finally feels a little optimistic after track after track of foreboding music. Trophic Cascade<\/i> ends up feeling like one long segmented dream \/ hallucination, carrying a gauzy, surrealistic feel through song after song.<\/p>\n
The questions Trophic Cascade<\/i> asks\u2014like, is it possible for someone to sing a little like both Neil Young and David Byrne while writing songs that sound a bit like lost B-sides from pre-Dark Side<\/i> Pink Floyd?\u2014are all answered \u201cYes.\u201d Matthew O\u2019Neill follows his vision here, populating these tunes with a multitude of influences while sounding like no one but himself, a sort of mystic shaman sketching out his dreams and hopes for the earth he loves in the language he knows best: music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10055],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-45067","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-matthew-oneill","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45067"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45067"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}