Innerviews<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I first encountered Randy McStine back in 2010, he was a 22-year-old singing, songwriting, many-instrument-playing prodigy with a pair of instrumental guitar albums under his belt, who had just delivered an album of rather Floydian progressive rock under the moniker Lo-Fi Resistance. Nearly as noteworthy as the music itself was the fact that Spock\u2019s Beard drummer\/vocalist Nick D\u2019Virgilio was so enamored of the material that his initial guest spot on one track evolved into playing on, and then mixing, the entire album.<\/p>\n
The ensuing 14 years have been quite a journey for McStine. After two more outings as Lo-Fi Resistance, he began recording under his given name while engaging in parallel collaborations\u2014first The Fringe, with D\u2019Virgilio and Flower Kings bassist Jonas Reingold, and then McStine & Minnemann, with Aristocrats drummer-singer-composer Marco. In 2019 he was the opening act on The Pineapple Thief\u2019s tour, and had signed on to be touring guitarist-vocalist for Big Big Train\u2019s 2020 tour before the world shut down. When one door closes, another opens, though: McStine\u2019s next gig was as touring guitarist \/ backing vocalist for the reunited Porcupine Tree in 2022-23.<\/p>\n
Any way you slice it, it\u2019s an impressive resume. And the collaborations and touring roles make good sense; McStine is a gifted player and singer who\u2019s also something of a musical chameleon, seamlessly adapting his approach to each of the above-mentioned situations. Meanwhile, his many adventurous solo outings have at times felt like a quest for a musical identity.<\/p>\n
As recounted in McStine\u2019s recent interview with Anil Prasad\u2019s Innerviews<\/i>, work on Mutual Hallucinations<\/i> dates back to the year before the pandemic, and developed over the course of its gestation into an album about dislocation and isolation, looking at how the distance has grown between not just human beings, but the distinct realities we inhabit inside our algorithmically curated social media silos. These distinct, divergent shared realities are the mutual hallucinations of the album\u2019s title.<\/p>\n
One of many interesting choices McStine makes here is to include four instrumentals, starting with opener \u201cBodies In Space,\u201d a 2:01 nugget of playfully layered loops and synths that\u2019s simultaneously charming and alienating. First vocal track \u201cCounterintuitive\u201d opens with just McStine\u2019s voice and ukelele, probably not what anyone was expecting, which seems to be the point. \u201cCounterintuitive creatures we are,\u201d he sings, \u201cIt\u2019s a wonder we\u2019ve made it this far \/ If we just lived forever, we\u2019d still look for new ways to die \/ And sell them to anyone who\u2019d buy.\u201d Musically, this 2:33 number is super-concise, almost ADD prog, shapeshifting every ten or 15 seconds by adding a new instrument, a new rhythm, a new bit of sonic wizardry.<\/p>\n
The earnest \u201cAdopted Son\u201d opens with a mellow synth wash and acoustic guitar and has a more traditional structure, with a lilting, cycling melody that McStine keeps adding layers to, while the guesting Harrison keeps a hypnotic beat underneath. \u201cSend Your Light\u201d cleverly mixes electronic elements with drums, guitar and vocals, developing an almost prog-pop feel (think Talk Talk or Tears For Fears), before busting into a big, fuzzy, distorted guitar solo over the guesting Minnemann\u2019s alternately restrained and explosive drums.<\/p>\n
The album\u2019s one extended piece at 9:29, \u201cEconomy Of Differences\u201d is a dreamy mini-epic about the era of division we\u2019re living through; it\u2019s biting\u2014\u201cI keep trying to convince myself \/ There can\u2019t be much further we can fall\u201d\u2014but also feels right on target. With no drums and Adam Holzman supplying layer upon layer of keyboards, the track develops a kind of tidal flow that carries through the second half, until near the end they begin peeling off the layers one by one, to beautiful effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cBask\u201d is a bite-sized instrumental featuring McStine on piano, guitars and Mellotron, accompanied by a string quartet playing an arrangement by Dave Gregory (XTC, Big Big Train). Airy and contemplative, a handful of reverbed electric guitar strums give it added dimension. The mood shifts abruptly again as third instrumental \u201cThe Scroll\u201d opens with a complex backbeat from the guesting D\u2019Virgilio as McStine paints rather math-rock figures with guitar\u2026 and then it gets fusion-y\u2026 and then there\u2019s a psychedelic freak-out\u2026 and then it all disappears and reemerges in a fresh incarnation that segues into an airy Gilmour-esque guitar solo. Truly, it\u2019s a track that contains multitudes.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As with \u201cCounterintuitive,\u201d \u201cImpossible Door\u201d jumps straight into the vocal, as McStine gets his Jeff Lynne on with thrummy acoustic rhythm guitar and a loping late-Beatles\/ELO feel, albeit with a Toy Matinee art-rock twist. The guardedly upbeat lyric addresses the value of striving: \u201cA little light can shine once in a while \/ When you\u2019re reaching for that impossible door \/ It might open right up for you.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIncandescent,\u201d the last of the album\u2019s four instrumentals, is all keyboards as McStine layers pulsing waves, playful piano bits and almost xylophone-sounding synths. Then, after a brief intermission, Adam Holzman joins the party and things veer off in a Dark Side Of The Moon<\/i> direction. It\u2019s light on substance, but it\u2019s original and entertaining and fittingly hallucinatory. <\/p>\n
The album finishes with \u201cRemains,\u201d as McStine again addresses themes of division, deceit and disillusion. The track begins drummerless and languid, with burbling textures behind his keening, plaintive vocal, until at 2:24, Minnemann\u2019s drums and McStine\u2019s fat-and-juicy guitar solo burst in to power a closing crescendo. <\/p>\n
In the aforementioned Innerviews<\/i> interview, McStine comments that \u201cThe people that listen to my music are the same as me. They\u2019re people who aren\u2019t caught up in categorizing the music. They just want to listen to it as a piece of art.\u201d Indeed, and McStine\u2019s art is not simple or reliant on surface appeal; it demands careful listening and focus to fully appreciate. These songs are moody and unpredictable and ugly and beautiful, sometimes all at once. They have presence, and that is a skill I don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to teach.<\/p>\n
Mutual Hallucinations<\/i> is a perceptive, expansive, and above all lovingly-crafted album that challenges you to immerse yourself inside its art-rock aesthetic. Some will make it across that threshold and some won\u2019t; all I can do is report that this particular listener stepped inside and discovered abundant treasures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[11028],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-47038","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-randy-mcstine","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47038","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=47038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47038"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47038"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}