Praise for 3 Leafs‘ Canal Smarts from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Latest from these San Francisco psychedelic space rockers, and yet another record that has us wondering what it is exactly that keeps these guys from being huge.
Sure here at aQ, we sell TONS of 3 Leafs records, but they’ve yet to start getting the sort of broader attention bestowed on many of their spacey / psychedelic brethren. Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, White Hills, Burnt Hills, etc. If you’re into ANY of those bands, or just into space rock and psych rock and have somehow managed to miss out on these guys, now’s the time to remedy that. And Canal Smarts is as good a place to start as any.
With the band expanded to a sextet, including Anthony from Ezeetiger, Tim Cohen of the Fresh & Onlys, and Chris Cones, Canal Smarts starts things off with a sidelong slowburn sprawl, that might be the best thing we’ve heard from these guys yet.
A thick crunchy bassline is looped and sent drifting into the ether, the drums are super minimal, a skittery shuffle, the guitars aren’t riffing or chugging, instead they’re emitting clouds of vaporous drift, of crystalline shimmer, and blurred chordal whir, the whole thing laced with intercepted cell phone calls, of what sounds like whirring organs.
The mix heavily panned so sounds seems to be drifting from speaker to speaker, there are vocals too, some ethereal and angelic, others reverbed and croony. And throughout, there seems to be a miasma of random sounds, voices, percussion, strange production, random FX. A heady blurred swirl of droned out psychedelia, that seems to us like one of those long form Miles Davis space-jazz mega jams reimagined via modern psychedelic drug rock.
There also seems to be a bit of Necks going on, that same sort of super minimal looped jazziness, mesmerizing and hypnotic, repetitive and circular. The sidelong epic unfurling as a slowly building sonic smoldering, that spends its second half winding down, becoming more spare and sparse.
The rhythms fragmenting, much of the effects heavy atmospheres dissipating, leaving something almost poppy, with some proper vocals. A sort of slow motion psych pop drift, that disappears into a cloud of tangled melody and gradually fading shimmer. And that’s just the A side!
The flipside starts off with the oddly titled ‘Guacamole Window’ (the band seem to have a thing for goofy titles), a surprisingly propulsive jam, urgent busy bassline over a skittery rhythmic shuffle forming the framework, while the rest of the band fill the rest of the space, with wildly looped samples, dense swirls of FX, clipped vox, plenty of industrial whir, more vocals, which give the song an almost old school post punk vibe.
There are tangles of psyche guitar in there too, but so doused in effects they barely sound like guitars, spidery melodies underpin the proceedings, and near the song’s end, the guitars grow more distorted and angular, the bass even buzzier and busier, the vocals sent careening back and forth, distorted and dubbed out, the song finishing off in a blaze of wild sonic chaos.
And then finally, the comparatively low key title track finishes things off, with a slithery funky bassline, plenty of heavily effected percussion, and more vocals, another chunk of abstract psych pop, that seems to slowly coming apart, a dubbed out bit of psychedelic minimalism, that mixes classic melodies with fluttery dubbed out effects, guitars drift in and out, the whole thing delightfully druggy and dreamy, and the perfect spacey wind-down.
Yet another kick ass record from 3 Leafs, with apparently another one on the way any day now! We can’t recommend these guys, or this record, highly enough, especially for all of you into spacey psych (and we know that’s a LOT of you), and who knows, maybe this will be the record that finally pushes them to the next level. But heck, if not this one, maybe the next one, or the next one, or the next one…
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Tags: 3 Leafs, Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Canal Smarts, psychedelica
This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2012 at 7:53 pm and is filed under 2012, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
No Responses to “Album of the day: 3 Leafs – Canal Smarts”