#52: Red Ants and Mercy Giants

New Weird America Revisited / Population II / Bobby Lee & Joe Harvey-Whyte

Hey Folks!

Happy Spring. It’s been so great to be able to touch grass this past week. I’m itching to get out for some hikes but I’ve been trying to be respectful of the trails during mud season. Trail work is hard work!

We did something different on Trailhead ep 170. I dedicated the first hour to folky fringe music of my young adulthood. There was a five-year period starting in 2003 that was just jam-packed with incredible new music (while I also started digging into the past a lot more via records). It was a bountiful period and it was instrumental in my musical and spiritual development. Yeah, there’s some nostalgia at play but more an admiration and sweet disbelief that I got to be part of something so creative and long-lasting.

So hit play for absolute classics from Six Organs of Admittance, Richard Youngs, and Hush Arbors as well as some deeper cuts in the form of jams from Canada’s Heavy Eye of the Sun and San Francisco’s Giant Skyflower Band.

Set 2 was dedicated to an incredible jam sequence from the Grateful Dead’s early spring performance in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1973. The band always seemed to play really well in Western Mass (check the 1972 and 1985 shows, too) and March 28, 1973 was no exception with a glorious and melodic Dark Star and a very vibey Playin’.

Peep the tracklist below and LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE.

1. Six Organs of Admittance - When You Finally Return - For Octavio Paz (Holy Mountain, 2004)

2. Richard Youngs - Gliding - May (Jagjaguwar,2002)

3. Heavy Eye of the Sun - Shivers - II (Self, 2006)

4. Hush Arbors - May All Your Pastures Now Spring with Herbs - Under Bent Limb Trees (Digitalis, 2004)

5. Giant Skyflower Band - Meditations On Christ And The Magi - Blood of the Sunworm (Soft Abuse, 2007)

6. Charalambides - Two Birds - A Vintage Burden (Kranky, 2006)

7. Grateful Dead - Weather Report Suite Prelude -> - Springfield Civic Center, Springfield, MA, 03/28/73

8. Grateful Dead - Dark Star -> - Springfield Civic Center, Springfield, MA, 03/28/73

9. Grateful Dead - Eyes of the World -> - Springfield Civic Center, Springfield, MA, 03/28/73

10. Grateful Dead - Playing in the Band - Springfield Civic Center, Springfield, MA, 03/28/73

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A big, huge, loving shoutout to Raven Sings the Blues for posting on Bluesky, putting Montreal trio Population II on my radar this week.

It’s simple: I saw incredible cover art and a band name referencing a beloved cult psych-blues album from the 70s and I clicked in.

When I hit play on Maintenant Jamais, the band’s third album, I didn’t get anything resembling Randy Holden’s elusiv 1970 masterpiece but rather an economical new wave progginess that I didn’t know I was missing but desperately needed.

If the internet is to be believed, the band made music that was more shaggy and blown out in their early days, but have been shortening the jams and crafting the tunes a bit more on this new album and the last. I’ll know for sure soon as I work backwards but I simply can’t help myself from starting Maintenant Jamais over again once the smoldering album closer ‘Cardinaux’ is done. The album’s 14 tracks emphasize groove and atmosphere, with the trio coming across like a more 80s indebted version of Dungen.

Am I really telling you a prog album without a single track that breaks five minutes?

Dude. Bong. Yes.

Population II certainly exude punkish thrust and intensity but it’s also clear on Maintenant Jamais that these players have never been too far from a Roger Dean cover or rips of early Gong records. The sound of the album is deeply seductive as well, punchy and warm but not without some bite.

This shit is so good.

PS:

If you don’t know the Randy Holden record:

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Really stoked to chat up some new, excellent work from my UK brother-in-corduroy, Bobby Lee.

Just announced today is Last Ride, a forthcoming full-length collab between guitarist Lee and UK pedal steeler Joe Harvey-Whyte.

The record is out in May via California label Curation Records and its first track, the languid but sure footed “Flatbed Alfalfa Run To Pueblo, Colorado, Fall 1972”, was released today. The trotting and intertwining Lee and Harvey-Whyte get up to here evokes a most colorful and peaceful western mountain drive and is but a whiff of the sweet nugs Last Ride is holding. Mount up.

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Missing a band like Bunnies is a testament to how woefully checked out I’ve been in the last 5 years on rock and rock-adjacent music. A proggy, Beefheartian art rock band from Western Mass and I never heard of them until this week?! That, my friends, is a travesty of justice.

Thanks to the good folks at Clandestine Label Services, for putting the quartet’s new album, Horror Spectrum, in my inbox.

With three tracks released so far, Horror Spectrum is one of those great what-the-fuck-is-this-really albums that everyone needs to listen to once in a while as a palette cleanser. Shit, you might not like it all that much but you oughta be damn glad people are still getting together and making weird shit like this. If you know what I’m talking about when I say Fat Worm of Error and Guerilla Toss, you need yourself some Bunnies. For what it’s worth, the real gold is the epic album closer ‘Realm At The End Of The Horror Spectrum’ but you can’t hear that one until April 25.

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As you’ve probably heard by now, the great Michael Hurley has passed. He was a true wandering minstrel who seemed to house boundless energy and creativity. Dude was constantly driving around this weary nation, playing songs old and new to crowds young and gray. He’ll be missed by many and forgotten by none.