Magic Hour - No Excess Is Absurd (1994)

Who knows if this little album will ever become one of those "legendary collaborations" because it features the Galaxie 500 rhythm section Damon Kurkowski and Naomi Yang alongside Magic Hour guitar wunderkinds Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar? Doesn't make any difference, really. No Excess Is Absurd is proof in the pocket that in 1994 Rogers was kicking out some of the best psychedelic rock ever. The other little wonder in all this is how perfect this quartet sounds as a band, as if they had been playing together for decades instead of a couple of months before recording this. The disc opens with "Isn't a Way," a droning, pulsing psych number that steadily forges its simple riff into your brain. Rogers is no vocalist so whatever he's singing is unintelligible anyway, so there's a further entrancing element. And then, there's this guitar that comes washing over you like a tidal wave, screaming with blistering, sloppy arpeggios playing off another guitar offering a wall of controlled feedback for it to smash its body upon. The tune splits itself down the middle and collapses in on itself in a throbbing, exhausted heap with the reverb still bouncing off the walls. There's a gorgeous electric/acoustic cover of "Sally Free and Easy" here as well, with Yang singing lead. One is reminded of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Codeine," in the chord changes and in Yang's lilting, languid vocal. Over nine minutes in length, it offers yet another opportunity to Rogers and Biggars to work their guitar magic and place it into overdrive while somehow keeping Yang's vocal on the top. This is the Velvets meeting the Quicksilver Messenger Service at Jesse Colin Young's house. The disc ends with "Heads Down #2," a song reminiscent of Crazy Horse minus Neil Young, with Nils Lofgren playing lead guitar. The wondrously knotty melody, with its intricate turns and odd time shifts, is the kind of tune J. Mascis dreams about writing. There's a summery pop quality to the melody that is hovering over all those dark rhythms and blazing guitar demonism. When Kurkowski has his fill in the middle of the tune, Rogers takes off for parts unknown, effects flailing and distorting the sound so completely one note cannot be distinguished from another because it's one big roar, the lead and rhythm guitars walling off each other in the feedback and creating a space of great beauty to either rise up in or die -- it hardly matters. This was the first of three albums for this quartet between 1994-1996; and while they are all very fine, this one, for its loose, cavorting excesses, is special indeed.