Bad Liquor Pond: Year of the Clam
(MT6 Records, 2007)
From Aural Innovations #38 (Jan 2008)
Bad Liquor Pond is a wonderful shoegazer/psych rock from Baltimore, Maryland.
The band was formed in 2004 and Year of the Clam is their debut CD. They have
melted together some classic psych sounds, traditional Americana, the hypnotic,
dreamy shoegazer stuff of Spacemen 3 and Dark Side, some spiritual, Indian vibes,
lovely acid folk modes and beautiful indie pop melodies, and I must say I enjoy
this album very much.
The opener, ”Apparations”, is already a pretty nice, three-minute-long
psych pop number with some country music feel in it. ”Molten Angel”
reminds me of Dark Side. ”The Panther's Den” is a beautiful ballad
with some heavy fuzz guitar. One of the highlights for me is the mystical, dreamy
and psychedelic ”The Beginning Meets the End (Verse One)” that includes
for example some sitar. Excellent stuff! The acoustic-driven ”Black Clouds
Rising (Verse Two)” is another nice, quite mellow track with pretty interesting
instrumentation and some hallucinatory speech samples. At some point this brings
to mind King Black Acid. ”Honeycomb” is an excellent shoegazer/post
rock track with some powerful guitar stuff and buzzing synths. The album's title
track is a short and instrumental acoustic psych folk track with sitar and weird
effects. ”Autopilot” is a bit wilder and heavier guitar-oriented
number that does sound quite a lot like Sun Dial on Reflecter, so I love it!
”Waves of Nightingales (Verse Three)” is an amazing Indian drone
with sitar, harmonium, percussion and other ethnic instruments. This will open
up your third eye! The drums join in somewhere in the middle for a while. The
track cools down and ends with psychedelic effects. I just love this track!
”Emperor” is a bit similar in mood to ”Panther's Den”
and ”Black Cloud Rising”, and could almost be a cover of a Green
Pajamas song. The album's longest song is ”Hourglass” at 6:55 and
it's at first a nice, beautiful psych pop instrumental with acoustic and electric
guitar and synthesized string sounds. There are some psych sounds in the middle,
and then the track turns into rather heavy post rock blasting. Phew... The end
is just weird, experimental sound effects to freak out your mind. This is a
very promising debut album by a band who have great pop melodies but who are
not afraid to freak-out a bit when needed.
You can find more information from the band’s MySpace site at:
http://www.myspace.com/badliquorpond
Reviewed by Santtu Laasko