Album Reviews

In a 1991 book called The Worst Rock’n’ Roll Records of All Time, music critics Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell declare Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle the 23rd worst rock’n’roll album of all time.

What imbeciles. Song Cycle isn’t a rock’n’ roll album. I hereby proclaim The Worst Rock’n’ Roll Records of All Time the world’s most ineffective anti-missile defense shield.

Likewise, assistant professor, PhD recipient (dissertation mostly about John Cage) and experimental guitarist Grubbs’ latest solo work is not a rock album and shouldn’t be judged as one, though some perplexed reviews have tried. He’s made some that are, but this isn’t one of them, though there are rock elements.

For instance “Holy Fool Music,” the third track on side one, sounds remarkably like an outtake from The Jefferson Airplane’s experimental, misunderstood and underappreciated masterpiece After Bathing at Baxter’s.

But to get there you have to pass through more meditative, drone-like, repetitive electric guitar material peppered with drum accents that probably throws for a loop rockers in need of some happy time chord changes.

The Louisville native was once in a rock band called Squirrel Bait and later, with Jim O’Rourke and John McIntire, in the influential post-rock Gastr del Sol (McIntire eventually left and it become a duo), which we covered enthusiastically in The Tracking Angle.

You must immerse yourself in this music for it to click. If you skim its surface you’ll leave annoyed but if you let the mystery drones and Grubbs’ simple declaratory lyrics about an optimist stick, you’ll get to some deep, repetitive, resonating guitar chording mixed with drones and organ washes that just might sweep you away into uncharted emotional spaces.

Just as the last held organ note fades, the ….Bathing at Baxter’s track swoops in. The guy is full of surprises.

Sometimes Grubbs reminds me of Lou Reed—had he grown up in the Far East somewhere. Grubbs now lives in Brooklyn but he hails from Kentucky and you can occasionally hear the hills jutting from his guitar.

Side two devolves into languid pools of subterranean bass synth accompanied by a whistling teapot or a synthesized version of same. That may sound strange, but if you let go at the beginning, Grubbs will take you for the ride and it will not only make sense, it will be the only obvious and appropriate outcome.

Think of An Optimist Notes the Dusk as a sonic palate cleanser as opposed to the main course and you’ll find it acts as a substantial and useful bridge between more eventful music, making it and what comes before and after all the more welcome and useful in your concentrated listening sessions.

Over time I found myself listening to this extremely well and simply recorded record more often than I expected. The musically adventurous may be perplexed at first, but ultimately not disappointed.