When Sweet Sleep Returned
Getting tagged as psychedelic rock music isn't as off-putting as getting tagged a sex offender, but there's a rough similarity. See, the way they work the sex offender registry, some teenage girl can be considered a child porn clearing house--she just needs to have made the mistake of sending a topless pic to her BF on his phone. His teacher finds out, the cops get involved, and she gets to introduce herself to her neighbors for the rest of her life. That's the problem with the sex offender registry, as it currently operates--there's no perspective, and the ease with which prunefaced parent groups can construct a website that red dots all the local sex offenders turns a bunch of people into Scarlet Letter wearing freaks. Some of them might deserve it, no doubt--child molesters, flashers and groper types are (statistically) recidivist crimes, but "deserve it" isn't really an attitude designed to construct a social attitude. It's the specificity of the offense that should determine the level of punishment--some sex offenders are just unlucky teenagers, just as some psych rock isn't a black light party catered by frozen Nyquil.
Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound didn't try to innovate psychedelia, and while they brought a bit of genre repurposement to the table, their goals don't seem far removed from those of Comets on Fire, they aren't as ambitious as the Six Organs of Admittance. Nope, this is just loud, noisy weed music, the kind that lends itself to farm parties and extensive noodling. Lyrics about nature and being together, stuff like that. It's been argued, somewhat convincingly, that Assemble Head aren't doing anything original, that they've simply showed up with the same sort of noisy duuuudde rock that's been around for decades.
I can't argue with much of that, because arguing with it would require a knowledge base and experiential relationship with the history of this sort of music that I don't have or want. I think I can name off the high points of the genre--Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators come to mind--but I couldn't tell you why those are the high points, or if they even are. It's not a form of music that spoke to me in my formative years, it's the soundtrack of a life I didn't have. An affection for Comets on Fire exists, but that stems not from actually discovering the sound on my own, it comes from having it offered to me by music magazines and websites I chose to take the recommendations of. (High school and college? There's a reason that the music people recall from that time period retains such fervent memories, and the reason isn't necessarily one ruled by the tunes themselves. Public school is a laboratory environment, a place where emotions are heightened, where the sort of music one listens to can not only dictate relationship opportunities, but can serve as a identification tool--you listen to this, because that's what you wish to be.) Coming to the genre after preconceived notions have taken cemented form, it's often preferable for the novice to focus their energy on the newest outgrowth of the sound, because the alternative--spending one's time exploring the history of a genre that's mostly the property of others--demands a devotion of time that's completely unappealing. (Should people who want to break their "i don't like rap music" stance be stuck spending years going through the initial years of its formation, or should they just explore the most recent iterations until they discover something they just like? I guess it depends on what you want--to be right, or to be happy.)
All of this has little to do with what When Sweet Sleep Returned had to offer, but from the little I've read about it, Sweet Sleep didn't have much to begin with--if you knew and cared about this kind of music, that is. But if you didn't--if the thought of listening to scuzzy, 70's era beard rock sent shivers of recoil down your spine--than Assemble Head did have something to offer you. A languid sludge through a subculture's mental state, one that comes laced with the desire to get so lost in music that the outside world looks as weirdly wild as the homes that bore the sound forth. It's music tourism at its worst, sure.
But I'll bet you a joint that the band doesn't care how you showed up. Just don't expect them to have an opinion on Stringer Bell. TV's for suckers, man.
-Tucker Stone, 2009
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