I’m a big fan of Mike Watt but don’t have much of his post Minutemen/fIREHOSE stuff. I don’t even have all those albums, which I should really get to. I just like the dude. He does a lot of stuff. His solo albums often have a heavy personal theme and I haven’t been able to give that kind of stuff my full attention to appreciate it, but I felt like I had to get at least one of these newer records and check it out so I got this one. To be needlessly honest (almost the entire point of this blog), I may have confused this project with Floored By Four, which has Yuka Honda in it. I guess I’m gonna have to get that record too. He started two whole bands almost at the same time while he was already doing solo stuff. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

But hold on, this is not just Watt and some random obscuros either. You got guitarist John Dieterich from Deerhoof on this thing, who also does some vocals. Watt does his semi-spoken thing too. But it’s almost an instrumental record. If you took typical Watt basslines and Deefhoof guitar and just mashed it up, you would get a record that sounds nothing like one. It’s more like a mashup of the kind of low-key indie rock that drummer Tim Barnes is associated with, and the atonal free jazz of pianist Thollem McDonas.

I’ve just got the mp3s and even tho I don’t have a really strong opinion on any of the individual songs, I’ve racked up quite a number of plays on this thing. I usually put it on at night and fall asleep to it, or have it on in the background during the day. It’s all pretty laid back. I think the cover, which is pretty kickass, is a little misleading. I recommend this album if you have a severe anxiety problems, or if you have a habit of ingesting so much caffeine you think your heart might explode if you don’t fall asleep immediately. Something about matches up with my brainwaves around bedtime: tired but tense. Or, if I’m trying to work on something, it kinda unsticks me; I can just keep going, sleepy, shambolic, confused, but moving forward. If I was a critic, which I am not, I don’t know if I would give it a high score for musicianship. These are great musicians kinda sleepwalking their way through a record. I happen to like it. I think this resonates the way late-period Radiohead does for a lot of people who are, like Radiohead, more or less conventional rock people who just got bored with rocking out. So they throw in some downtempo free jazz. This band is more like for people who see free jazz live. This record is like a 2am set in a club after an evening of the members’ respective bands tearing shit up. You know, the kind of club that has 2am sets? Yeah, there’s not too many of those. %