(Stoner Rock, Blues Rock) Pearls and Brass - Pearls and Brass (2003), The Indian Tower (2006) - 2003-2006, MP3, 320 kbps

#777Треклист
1. Spinning Wheel Blues
2. Highway Sermon
3. Stone Leaves
4. Long Be The Day
5. Train Lady Blue
6. Bleeding Hands
7. The Greenest Gray
8. The Green, Rain Snake
9. I See, Shadows, I See
10. 1,000 Cities

#777Треклист
1. The Tower
2. No Stone
3. The Face of God
4. Black Rock Man
5. The Mirror
6. I Learn the Hard Way
7. Pray for Sound
8. The Boy in the Willow Tree
9. Wake in the Morning
10. Beneath the Earth
11. Away the Mirrors

Pearls and Brass, a young band from Nazareth, Pa., suggests an old, doomy way of looking at the world: 1970's biker metal, low-pitched and greasy and repetitive. The music makes you think of Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath. But they have a lived-in sound, and an effect like high-voltage meditation. They make the simple rather complicated, and the complicated rather simple.
What makes this band so good — on its second album, "The Indian Tower" (Drag City), and in its show at Cakeshop on Saturday night — is that its musicians have thought a lot about song structure, but even more about groove. The concentration on that groove by its three members — Randy Huth on guitar, Joel Winter on bass and Josh Martin on drums — means that the band can get rhythmically tricky in its theme riffs, swinging asymmetrically between two- and three-beat patterns, but you don't much notice it. The vocal lines sail right through these rhythmic shifts, the music's heavy bottom end never alters, and it all feels like one unfolding pattern.
In keeping with so much of the rest of rock, and in distinction to their forebears, Pearls and Brass have all but ditched the solo as an expressive medium. The middle of their songs isn't really a space for soloing: it's a place to take a light nap. Where other bands would have built their crescendos, these players dived down and grew subtle, with Mr. Huth playing quiet raga-like lines, not particularly meant to draw in your attention, over a repeated bass note. They saved up their energy for the thrilling part of the song, the heart of the artichoke, when they snapped out of the reverie and hurled themselves into the verse again.
Many songs sounded roughly the same. (At Cakeshop, the band didn't roll out "I Learn the Hard Way" or "Away the Mirrors," its acoustic, country-blues like numbers on "The Indian Tower.") And Mr. Huth and Mr. Winter, the two singers, have remarkably similar voices. Still, this is cheap, effective hypnosis; it's also music that feels extremely good. (c) BEN RATLIFF

Joel Winter - bass, vocals
Randy Huth - guitar, vocals
Josh Martin - drums