wooden shjips - singles collection volume 1

This release by definition isn’t a new album; it’s skeleton featuring cover clearly states that it’s a singles compilation. But since Wooden Shjips are so embalmed in their influences (which range from avant garde to garage rock), it’s no mistake that this LP sounds like a well-planned concept. It’s only fair that the record kicks off with ‘Shrinking Moon’, given that the original release is now something of an unobtainable obscurity. In the same way dead stars form black holes from cosmic singularities, it nearly implodes before it begins. Thereafter the flood gates open, with the heavy psych shake of ‘Space Clothes’ and into ‘Clouds Over Earthquake’. The latter rumbles like a flight of attack aircrafts, with guitars trading healthy doses of feedback for deadly napalm gas. Even on ‘SOL ’07’, the most melodically finite song on the collection, the band feel ready to lapse into arrest at any time. The only thing keeping it in constant check is the rhythm section, a crude pacemaker fashioned from a broken wah pedal and a half smoked pack of cigarettes. All these songs are pushed to the point of nothingness, on journeys that roll along seemingly ad infinitum. And now they are no longer rare, basically, they are six of the finest cuts of psych you’ll hear this side of forever.