Grails - Take Refuge In Clean Living (2008)

The Grails fifth full-length picks up right where Burning Off Impurities left off and goes even further. Their instrumental land of improvised grooves, trance-like drones, Eastern modes and melodies, psychedelic textures, and above all, their very forward moving post-rock music, is unlike Pelican's or Mogwai's; it doesn't resemble Isis' or Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s. The Grails' brand of guitar-centric instrumental music is not given to simply building crescendos. Instead, it is interested in exploring the outer reaches of groove, space, and texture. It seems to be focused on how much they can pack into a given tune to make things like space and time disintegrate in the mind of the listener. Here, 32 minutes can seem like hours, or they can go by in what feels like a heartbeat. Take Refuge in Clean Living contains five tracks, four of which are originals. The lone cover -- an unrecognizable version of the Ventures' "11th Hour" -- is cut three, and is the album's hinge piece on both CD and vinyl (it divides side one and side two). "Stoned at the Taj" is a brilliant opening track. It begins with some spacy telegraphic radio sounds, a big, bad dirty bassline (fuzztone on stun), and a pulse; these build with strummed, fingerpicked electric guitars playing different melodies, and a blues lick or two unhurriedly upping the tension, and then, as the body of the repetitive melody becomes more pronounced, the drums thunder in, waves of organ, a Turkish saz, feedback, wah-wah pedals, and harpsichords all layered on top of one another, just washing over the listener in a pure stoned groove. As the track develops, sounds and instruments coming out from in back of that monster thump and weave it into near silence with just a couple of keyboard lines holding a drone chord to keep the focus. The nocturnal psychedelia moves toward an Eastern mode but it never loses its center. The guitars, more delicate than before, are perhaps even more mysterious and menacing. When it breaks open a second time, it's an entirely different setting for the bass, playing a new line and creating a different groove that just naturally evolves in both tempo and dynamic. The speed and intensity are logical extensions of the groove itself. This is one of those tracks that you can play a thousand times and still not hear everything in it.