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CD Feature/ Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters: "Coming Clean"

  Tobias

It is hard to imagine that this man needed years to start believing in his own voice. As a sidekick to Jeff Buckley, Gary Lucas has had a hand in one of the most spoken about rock albums of the past decade (“Grace”, a breathtaking, ebullient and provokingly idiosyncratic emotional power ride) and assisted some of the great both in the studio and on stage. Rolling Stone Magazine editor Glen kenny has written an atmospheric and emotive introduction to “Coming Clean”, but as the music proves, Lucas has already caught up with his heroes.

One thing’s for sure: As long as you’re able to write songs like “Fata Morgana”, you’re no longer in need of any compliments. The psyched-up psycho-folk of the opener melts into the warm waves of “Follow”, on which Lucas deep sonorous timbre glides through buttery guitar harmonies like a cakecutter through fresh cherry pie. The bipolarity of this ouverture immediately sets the scene for the entire record, which effortlessly jumps from sparsely orchestrated tender folk to demonic paranoia, voodoo drumming, lightning speed solos and all sorts of madness. If the press release sees Gary in the same tradition as Eric Clapton, Cream and Jimi Hendrix, then that is more than mere namedropping or legendhopping. Like these patron saints, Lucas’ inspiration is no calculated element, but comes ripping round the corner like a combustible cannon ball, suddenly setting the scene on fire with nothing but a few flaring and fibrillating notes. His playing is otherworldly, mean, muscular, frenzied and more than just once tears apart the fabric of the song itself. Just like you can’t think of some classic 70s songs without the appurtinant solo, it is the improvisational segment which shapes the listener’s deepest impressions – only, you never know when it’s going to hit you. In the songwriting encounter with the aforementioned (and sadly missed) Jeff Buckley, “Mojo Pin”, Lucas contrasts fluffy and dreamy passages with an outspoken confession of love, until the doors of hell open up and a gargantous riff sucks up all form and structure into a tectonic maelstrom.

 “Ain’t got you” covers Bruce Springsteen and the instrumental “Psycho” Alfred Hitchcock’s sound sculptor Bernard Hermann and “Coming Clean” nestles comfortably right in between these two extremes. Even if the album drifts off into more experimental spheres in the second third of its duration, the congenially intense “Gods and Monsters” pull things back into the safe haven of song and sensibility again before the curtain falls. It’s taken him some time to be heard, but now Gary Lucas found his voice, you won’t be able to get it out of your head for quite some time.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Gary Lucas
Homepage: Mighty Quinn Records