Ignored           Obscured            Restored

Lately I’ve been listening a lot to an album by a New Jersey based band called Garcia Peoples.  The name of the band betrays their main stylistic influences, primarily the Grateful Dead.

The album, Cosmic Cash, is their debut.  For the most part, the band on record avoids the temptation to give us long jams, instead opting for more concise, 3-5 minute tracks.  The one exception is today’s SotW, “Suite: Cashing Out / Sigh of Relief / The Midnight Dancer / All the Time / Distant Lands.”

A review of the album at Psych Insight Music says this about the Suite.

“[It] begins with a really rather punky overture before segueing into one of the most powerful parts of the album, ‘Sign of Relief’, which is the sound of a band straining at the leash yet containing itself… that sense of wanting to break out yet remaining on the edge itself is a skill in itself. ‘The Midnight Dancer’ is a funky slow groove of a movement that goes off-kilter in a Talking Heads sort of way before segueing into ‘All The Time’ with Garcia Peoples twin guitar attack really coming to the fore. Again elements of blues and rock are nicely folded into an overall feeling of love for the music the band are playing. This before bringing the whole thing to a close with ‘Distant Lands’ with its infusion of southern heat that really helps this track and, again, the album generally radiate warmth and a certain generosity of spirit. This ‘suite’ is a terrific fourteen minutes of music that, for me is worth the admission fee on its own.”

Indeed!

Enjoy… until next week.