Earth

The Bee Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull (Southern Lord)
By Martin Popoff

One is reminded of being suckered into buying the Robert Crumb letters book, Your Vigor For Life Appalls Me, where the best quote in all of those letters was used up in the title. One can also draw parallels to the excellent new book out on the No Wave movement, no wave being angry, crappy, utterly (also) used up post-punk from New York.

Love the production here, and a few cool things can be salvaged from this sludge/doom instrumental cure for insomnia, such as the ethereal Chroma Key-like melody of “Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine),” but for the most part, enjoyment is used up after following along boozily with a few guitar solos and wondering how they got such a cozy, gauzy, comforting drum sound. Piano is a nice touch – a real texture unifier, not a divider – as is the surprise guest slot by snobby, patches-on-the-dinner-jacket six-stringer Bill Frisell. But seriously, I mean really serious, Earth could have doubled the speed of the whole thing and all the ideas would still have come through with no information overloaded and then lost, sketchy integrity intact.
(www.southernlord.com)