Psychedelic rock and beards share a number of surprising similarities. While they may grow with single-minded focus into stately bushes, or explode into wild uncultivated snarls, both require a degree of commitment to generate and possess a certain grandeur when executed properly. They also compliment one another wonderfully, Wooden Shjips’ six-string wielding helmsman Ripley Johnson producing a searing example of the one whilst sporting a fine specimen of the other.
Perhaps the most essential shared feature however is testosterone, which was in no short supply this evening, the Annandale’s blackened cavern being loosely filled with intense young men cultivating a motley array of facial trimmings. Johnson may like to think of the group’s music as ‘dance’, but moving and shaking seemed low on the crowd’s agenda, most seeming content to stand at slack-jawed attention to the meditative blare being sculpted on stage.
Fair enough really, Wooden Shjips’ particular brand of psychedelia – defiantly minimalist harmonies, droning repetition and blistering noise – producing an at times numbing sense of stasis. Not for the fellas on stage of course, rhythm section and bassist Dusty Jermier in particular maintaining an unshakeable groove with dogged glee, leaving Johnson free to emit all manner of enigmatic utterances, abrasive spirals and stinging whorls all soaked in a suitably impenetrable tangle of reverb.
It’s not difficult to appreciate the precision and muscle that underlie the grinding noise. That said, Wooden Shjips still feel as though they’ve yet to really hit their stride. Letting it all grow out may be liberating, but it gets old after a while – the audience halved between the main set and the encore, it taking some persistent enthusiasts to coax them back for some more. Might be time for a trim.
First published in The Brag, March 2010
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