There’s been something happening lately. You’ve probably felt it, too, most any place on this verdant sphere that you choose to call home. A shift in the smell on the wind. A faint rippling warmth on the otherwise bone-bright kiss of the sun. Tentative shoots and coquettish bulbs testing the waters, or even beginning to stretch their legs outright. And mostly, more than anything, so much so that the cities around us begin to seethe with the electricity of it all: people everywhere learning to breathe again – to smile, even.
Springtime, friends. The coming of spring and the unleashing of all the pent-up Dionysian energy that winter’s jealous clutching forced you to keep quiet, to turn inward and ugly. Call it corny if you want, but I’ll call the changing of the seasons and the warming of the frozen ground spiritual and thank you kindly for your snickers. I am a machine that turns your cynicism into joy.
(Sorry, Southern Hemispheric friends, for the dysynchronicity of the situation. But you know spring, too, in your antipodean bones.)
All of this demands the question: What’s your good-time music?
What music do you put on when everything – or at least everything under your control – is right? What music do you put on when you don’t spend a single second thinking about what it is you ought to put on? What’s your music that sounds like finding twenty bucks in the pocket of a pair of rarely-worn pants? What’s your music that sounds like high-fiving the universe? What’s your music that sounds like the shedding of burdens? What’s your liberation music?
Can you see where I’m going with this?
Into this auspicious seasonal breach steps Victor Griffin, veteran axeman of Death Row, Place of Skulls, and, of course, Pentagram fame. For the self-titled debut of his new (and, admittedly, quite awkwardly titled) band Victor Griffin’s In-Graved, he has paired up with drummer Pete Campbell (also of Place of Skulls, as well as Minnesota’s The Mighty Nimbus) and a seemingly random assortment of guests on both bass and keyboards. I mean, maybe you can tell me if there’s some logic behind getting Jeff Olson, drummer for Trouble, and Mike Puleo, bassist for Orodruin, to both play keyboards, or to get six bass players to play on eight songs (including current or former members of Goatsnake, Acid King, and Earthen Grave, plus both a current and former bass player for Pentagram). I’d love to hear it. Better than even odds are, though, that Griffin called up some pals and said, “Hey, I’ve got some tunes. Want to come jam?”
But ultimately, the important thing is that none of that is important in the slightest. Patchwork construction aside, In-Graved is forty impeccable, airtight minutes, jam-packed with the feels-goodiest kind of brawny, bluesy biker doom your sun-starved brain can conjure. Honestly, there’s so much to recommend this album that I can’t hope to do it full justice, so here’s the short version: If you’ve been a fan of any of Griffin’s former pursuits, you will also be a fan of this.
However, in the interest of analytic rigor, let me also add that the album’s wild success is attributable to three simple (but often elusive) factors: sound, songs, and solos. The instant the intro riff to album opener “Digital Critic” swings and swerves confidently into earshot, Griffin’s guitar tone reaches in through your eardrums, finds a passage all the way back to the brainstem, and gives it an anxiety-obliterating bear hug. His tone is thick, chewy, and almost impossibly warm, but never so overpowering that it turns his riffs sloppy. Another crucial component of the album’s overwhelmingly alluring sound are the keyboards, which are sometimes Hammond-proggy, and sometimes doom-organ-spooky, but always a relatively subtle and highly enriching touch. Those keys, for example, are what catapult the opening of “Love Song for the Dying” from being simply the doomiest track on the album into sounding a Thor-driven hammerstrike of sweet merciful doooooom. (Also helping to make the track hit extra hard is the fact that it immediately follows the lighter touch of the band’s excellent cover of Jethro Tull’s “Teacher.”)
Overall tone and aesthetic are great things, but In-Graved cashes in on the promising set-up with some vital and instantly memorable songs. Both “Late for an Early Grave” and album closer “Never Surrender” appeared on Griffin’s 2004 album Late for an Early Grave, but they are immensely improved here, with a massively stronger production and much better vocals. Griffin’s vocals have never been the selling point of the man’s music, but throughout the album his singing is stronger than ever, filled with a gritty but soulful power. The downcast but mostly mellow mid-album highlight “Fading Flower” sees Griffin turn in some particularly impassioned singing. But really, every single song on the album bursts with rock-solid structures, ground-shaking riffs, instrumental flourishes, great melodies, and just…just plain awesomeness. I mean, honestly, I’m looking back at some of my notes for this review, and I came across this: “The riff that bridges between verses on ‘What If…’: DAAAAAMN. And the SOLO for nearly all of minute three…” Yeah, th-…that’s pretty much all I can say about it.
Of course, that leaves the third factor – and really the primary draw of anything featuring Victor Griffin – that I’ve called crucial to the album’s success: the soloing. Again, if you’re familiar with Griffin’s past work, then the last thing you need is for some jerk on the internet to spend time going, “Um, whoa, this dude’s really good at guitar.” But…have you heard him? This dude’s really good at guitar. Everywhere Griffin solos, flowers immediately bloom. The man’s tone is so clean, and his playing so intuitive, that I really struggle to describe it. His solos here are extremely blues-based, and generally follow a mostly laid-back delivery, but every last second is just so, so, so smooth that it feels like being wrapped in a blanket of rainbows and lapping waves and sunshine and curvy brunettes (or, y’know, whomever happens to be your thang).
Still, if I had to pin it down, here’s what I’d say about the appeal of Griffin’s soloing: It sounds essentially blue-collar. And I don’t mean that as an insult. What I mean is, he’s clearly favoring emotion over technique – which isn’t to say he lacks technique. Basically, Victor Griffin solos in a way that makes the listener sit down and think, “Damn, that’s some sweet soloing. I bet I could do that.” Of course, sit down and try to replicate what he’s doing here and you’ll soon find it’s a lot more difficult than it seems. But that’s really the skill: Guitarists can either play lines and runs and trills and arpeggios and squeals that telegraph precisely how difficult they are, or guitarists can have such mastery of their craft, and such smart emotional control, that they don’t play notes anymore, but feelings. (Again, see above: I am a machine that turns your cynicism into joy.) That’s the blues, basically: howling, wailing notes that mask the skill needed to craft their impact, rather than meticulously scaffolded staff-paper exercises that hope to accidentally produce an emotional response in a listener otherwise kept at arm’s length. Victor Griffin is fundamentally a democratic guitar player; not everyone can do this, but to listen to him, it sure feels like everyone can. And to produce that feeling in the listener is to make the listener a collaborator in the production of her joy.
Am I being hokey? Yeah, sure, probably. But really, sit and think about it: What’s your good-time music? I know it’s out there, and of course it’s not singular: there’s plenty of good-time music out there. There are so many thoughtful, hard-working people out there in this wacky world pushing sound waves through the air at us, trying to find some connection. However big the universe of your good-time music is, though, I think In-Graved just made it one album bigger, and that’s no small thing.
