dusted

Dire Wolves, under the leadership of West Coast psychedelicist, Jeff Alexander has been spinning out trippy grooves since the late aughts, accumulating a dizzying catalog of more than two dozen recordings including four proper albums, one-offs, cassettes, splits, live recordings and singles. Grow Towards the Light is the band’s second on Beyond Beyond Is Beyond, as well as the second to feature Georgia Carbone as singer. Previously, Lau Nau was the main vocalist, and her singing slanted more dark, freak folk than Carbone’s; Carbon adds a rich, buzzing, hypnotic drone to the music, an enveloping hum that tips the songs away from the work of affiliated bands like Jackie-O Motherfucker, Faun Fables and Spires That in the Sunset Rise and into something like Stereolab territory.

As before, Dire Wolves is a relatively large ensemble, comprised this time of Alexander, Carbone, Brian Lucas on bass, Sheila Bosco on drums and piano, Arjun Mendiratta on violin, and Taralie Peterson on saxophone. This expansive line-up permits a gentle, drowsing sort of complexity, where warm lines of guitar and bass intersect with edgy slashes of violin and drums percolate polyrhythmically in a warm bath of ambient tone. “I Control the Weather,” for instance, opens in a skittery drum solo, picking up an insouciant, jazzy guitar lick that is italicized by fidgety violins on the upbeats. Carbone’s voice hums and croons in wordless flights, doubled so that it seems to come from all directions. Instrumental parts intersect and converse at a muted volume; there is a weightless, airy open-ness to these grooves, so that you can nearly feel a sun-tipped breeze blowing through.

Cuts fall at various places along the psych-folk continuum, with “Discordant Angels” hive-mind vocals lifting folk-traditional picking into a higher realm; it sounds a bit like Pentangle’s jazz-folk hybrid, a lot more like Feathers’ dreamiest cuts. “Water Bearing One” tends more towards trap-door-through-reality psych a la Bardo Pond. It is slow and hazed out, the clarity of piano runs dropping into the mix like bright coins submerged in cough syrup. “Every Step Is Birth,” the longest cut, emphasizes a rhythm that moves light footed and syncopated through a dappled drone.

The single, “Spacetime Rider,” is the least folk-linked of the bunch, edging into Krautish dream-propulsion with a more prominent bass line than usual pushing up through the sound. Here, Carbone’s singing seems almost like words, like a chant or incantation that you could make out if you thought hard enough. It’s a noddy, hummy reverie, paced by drums and embellished with sawing violins, and if you could shake off the daydream, you might be able to dance to it.  

Jennifer Kelly