WOODEN SHJIPS
''BACK TO LAND''
OCTOBER 15 2013
41:35
1 Back To Land 05:16
2 Ruins 05:12
3 Ghouls 03:51
4 These Shadows 05:22
5 In The Roses 05:07
6 Other Stars 05:22
7 Servants 06:05
8 Everybody Knows 05:17
All Tracks By Ripley Johnson
Ripley Johnson/Guitar, Vocals
Dusty Jermier/Bass Guitar
Nash Whalen/Organ
Omar Ahsanuddin/Drums
REVIEW
by Fred Thomas/AMG
Somewhere between 2011's West and 2013's Back to Land, members of the Bay Area psych rock act Wooden Shjips left their picturesque home base of San Francisco for the rainier environments of Portland, Oregon. Wooden Shjips' identity had always been somewhat rooted in their place in the San Francisco scene, going so far as to have an aerial photo of the Golden Gate Bridge adorn the cover of West. Growing out of their new, cloudier surroundings, the fuzzy, understated psychedelic boogie rock and mystical acoustic dreaminess of Back to Land don't sound decidedly more steeped in Northwestern dreariness and contemplation, but there is a noticeable shift toward more introspective songwriting and less jagged textures. The laid-back grooves of tracks like "Ruins" and "Servants" bring dark and spaced-out sheets of guitar into the forefront as singer Ripley Johnson's echo-drenched and muttering vocals ride the droning waves. Repetitive rhythms from the Mo Tucker school of drumming have always been a trademark for the band, but Back to Land speeds up the pace at times without falling into pitfalls of overplaying, with tightly locked organ and guitar riffs on faster tracks like "Ghouls" or the maraca-fueled push of "In the Roses." The true standout track and clearest nod to a Portland-bred feel on Back to Land is the dusky wandering daydream of "These Shadows." One of the more acoustic-leaning songs the band has offered up, the tune is somewhere between the low-lit majesty of Mazzy Star and the early morning blurriness of the third Velvet Underground album, with far more guitar solos than either. It's a gorgeous breath of fresh air between the more brash and unhinged tunes. The overall pace, sequence, and vibe of Back to Land finds the Shjips teetering on the edge of classic rock mania with enough restraint to keep things minimal, mystical, and interesting throughout.
ABOUT THE BAND
By Official Website
Wooden Shjips’ rise to prominence from the psychedelic underground to the rock and roll overground has been a steady sojourn. With each consecutive release, the band has found new ways of transforming heady psychedelic rock into minimalist masterpieces, bridging the gap between the woozy freeness of Les Rallizes Denudes and Crazy Horse and the tightly wound simplicity of Suicide and the Velvet Underground.
Wooden Shjips, as it is today, started in 2006. The band self released a 10? and 7? that year and started playing shows shortly thereafter. Prior to 2006, Wooden Shjips was an experiment in primitive and minimalist rock. After it imploded, Ripley Johnson, guitar and vocals, assembled the current lineup of Dusty Jermier on bass, Nash Whalen on organ, and Omar Ahsanuddin on drums. All previous recordings, either self-released, for Holy Mountain, or Mexican Summer were done more piecemeal in the band’s rehearsal studio. 2011’s West marked the first time the band recorded in a proper studio. Recorded and mixed in six days at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco with engineer Phil Manley, West was mastered by Sonic Boom at Blanker Unisinn, Brooklyn, with additional mastering by Heba Kadry at the Lodge in New York.
Back To Land, the quartet’s follow-up to West, is the first Wooden Shjips record to be conceived outside of San Francisco. Ripley Johnson and Omar Ahsanuddin moved to Oregon, where the lush climates became a major influence on the songwriting. The band’s scope expanded to include more earthy, grounded tones, such as the acoustic guitar, without abandoning their modernist psych core.
There is an increased brightness to many of the songs on Back To Land, an easiness with which the band has flirted with in the past but never fully realized until now. The nervy urgency of West has evolved into an assured confidence, from the alliterative, interlocking guitar and organ groove of “Ruins” to the languidly compelling guitar solos of “Servants.” The addition of the acoustic guitar to the band’s textural palate is coupled here with some of the most melodically direct songs the band has written.
Still, there are still plenty of signature Shjips songs, with distorted riffs, modal keys, and a steady, crisp drum sound unfolding intensely while the elongated melodic guitar lines drift in and out of the foreground. On Back To Land this energy is captured in clear detail, designed as an immersive experience rather than a passive blasting. Back To Land was laid to tape at Jackpot Recording Studios in Portland by Kendra Lynn and mixed by Larry Crane. It was recorded over an 11-day session, resulting in some of the most detailed and spacious recordings of their career.
Back To Land is a breakthrough record for the Wooden Shjips: nuanced, varied and utterly addictive. The band will be touring extensively in the US and Europe November through February.
BIOGRAPHY
by Thom Jurek/AMG
San Francisco's enigmatically named Wooden Shjips play a minimal, droning brand of garage-styled psychedelia with a noticeable '60s Krautrock influence. The band's vocals slip beneath waves of throbbing minimal rhythms, while fuzztone guitar and shrieking organs jump to the foreground. When bandleader Ripley Johnson assembled the group in 2003, he wasn't interested in playing gigs or becoming famous; rather, his original intention was to find a group of non-musicians for the purposes of creating innovative music. The idea was that untrained players would have a brand new outlook on music and could bring something fresh to the table, perhaps a blend of the often noisy trance rock of the Velvet Underground and the frenetic mania of the one-hit wonder garage punks of the early '60s. Bassman Dusty Jermier, for example, was originally recruited to play sax, an instrument he'd never picked up before. Other members from that first incarnation often had such a lack of interest in playing live, the band hardly bothered looking for gigs.
Eventually, Wooden Shjips whittled themselves down to a more productive lineup comprising Dusty Jermier on trumpet and bass, drummer Omar Ahsanuddin, organ player Nash Whalen, and guitarist/vocalist Johnson. They knew that what they were doing wasn't going to be profitable, but Johnson was a big fan of impenetrable albums and arcane small-press poetry books, having grown fascinated with books that go unread for decades or out of print albums that are finally rediscovered by collectors and praised as lost gems. With that in mind, the band set about making purposely obscure records that Johnson envisioned leaving in libraries, thrift store bargain bins, and on park benches. The band's debut 10" vinyl offering had three tunes: "Shrinking Moon for You" on the A-side and "Death's Not Your Friend" and "Space Clothes," an experiment in musique concrète, on the flip. Eschewing both a MySpace page and a traditional website with MP3 downloads, the band instead gave away the entire pressing of 300 records, even paying the shipping costs for out-of-town requests. A few unexpected rave reviews, including one from Rolling Stone, raised the record's cachet and the band's profile.
The next project was "Dance, California" b/w "Clouds Over the Earthquake," a single that was released in 2006 to celebrate the centennial of the 1906 earthquake. The Shjips sold enough copies to break even and strengthen the band's buzz, which was also propelled by a video for "Dance, California" that featured public domain footage of various cityscapes and girls dancing under a strobe light at a '60s party. Wooden Shjips' third pre-album slab of vinyl was "Summer of Love 2007," a tribute to all the people who worked to make the world a better place -- including people like the Diggers, San Francisco's anarchist collective that founded the first Free Store and served free meals in Golden Gate Park to all hungry mouths. The proceeds of the single went to Food Not Bombs, a group that did similar work, and the band celebrated the single's release with a date opening for psychedelic legend Roky Erickson. It was their second real gig since starting the band.
Wooden Shjips recorded their self-titled first album between March and May of 2007. It was released on a small avant-garde label, Holy Mountain, and produced by Johnson and Jermier under their noms de production of Tedrick G. Rippy and Don Rifle. Furthermore, the album had been recorded in their rehearsal space on a half-inch eight-track console that Jermier found, a strictly analog project aiming at getting a high-quality recording on a low budget. Some tracks were layered up from that demos that Johnson brought in; others, including "Shine Like Suns," were live studio jams with the drum parts added later, since they only had two tracks for the drums and no way to keep the instruments from bleeding into each other. The album dropped in September 2007 and earned The Shjips more rave reviews. Shortly thereafter, they cut another 7" single, "Loose Lips" b/w "Start to Dreaming," this time for the Sub Pop label. The second volume of the band's singles arrived on Sick Thirst in 2010. Simply entitled Vol. 2, it included all the sides cut for the Sub Pop and Mexican Summer imprints, two self-released European tour singles, and a track cut for Yeti magazine. Wooden Shjips seemed to go on a brief hiatus while Johnson and his other band, Moon Duo, released their third offering, Mazes, in the spring of 2011. This was merely cloud cover, however, as WS went back to touring full-time in the summer as a preview for the full-length West, which was issued by Thrill Jockey in the fall. Following West, the band uprooted from their Bay-area home for the rainier surroundings of Portland, Oregon. They returned to their childhood influences of groove-heavy classic rock and spacey textures for 2013's Back to Land.
''BACK TO LAND''
OCTOBER 15 2013
41:35
1 Back To Land 05:16
2 Ruins 05:12
3 Ghouls 03:51
4 These Shadows 05:22
5 In The Roses 05:07
6 Other Stars 05:22
7 Servants 06:05
8 Everybody Knows 05:17
All Tracks By Ripley Johnson
Ripley Johnson/Guitar, Vocals
Dusty Jermier/Bass Guitar
Nash Whalen/Organ
Omar Ahsanuddin/Drums
REVIEW
by Fred Thomas/AMG
Somewhere between 2011's West and 2013's Back to Land, members of the Bay Area psych rock act Wooden Shjips left their picturesque home base of San Francisco for the rainier environments of Portland, Oregon. Wooden Shjips' identity had always been somewhat rooted in their place in the San Francisco scene, going so far as to have an aerial photo of the Golden Gate Bridge adorn the cover of West. Growing out of their new, cloudier surroundings, the fuzzy, understated psychedelic boogie rock and mystical acoustic dreaminess of Back to Land don't sound decidedly more steeped in Northwestern dreariness and contemplation, but there is a noticeable shift toward more introspective songwriting and less jagged textures. The laid-back grooves of tracks like "Ruins" and "Servants" bring dark and spaced-out sheets of guitar into the forefront as singer Ripley Johnson's echo-drenched and muttering vocals ride the droning waves. Repetitive rhythms from the Mo Tucker school of drumming have always been a trademark for the band, but Back to Land speeds up the pace at times without falling into pitfalls of overplaying, with tightly locked organ and guitar riffs on faster tracks like "Ghouls" or the maraca-fueled push of "In the Roses." The true standout track and clearest nod to a Portland-bred feel on Back to Land is the dusky wandering daydream of "These Shadows." One of the more acoustic-leaning songs the band has offered up, the tune is somewhere between the low-lit majesty of Mazzy Star and the early morning blurriness of the third Velvet Underground album, with far more guitar solos than either. It's a gorgeous breath of fresh air between the more brash and unhinged tunes. The overall pace, sequence, and vibe of Back to Land finds the Shjips teetering on the edge of classic rock mania with enough restraint to keep things minimal, mystical, and interesting throughout.
ABOUT THE BAND
By Official Website
Wooden Shjips’ rise to prominence from the psychedelic underground to the rock and roll overground has been a steady sojourn. With each consecutive release, the band has found new ways of transforming heady psychedelic rock into minimalist masterpieces, bridging the gap between the woozy freeness of Les Rallizes Denudes and Crazy Horse and the tightly wound simplicity of Suicide and the Velvet Underground.
Wooden Shjips, as it is today, started in 2006. The band self released a 10? and 7? that year and started playing shows shortly thereafter. Prior to 2006, Wooden Shjips was an experiment in primitive and minimalist rock. After it imploded, Ripley Johnson, guitar and vocals, assembled the current lineup of Dusty Jermier on bass, Nash Whalen on organ, and Omar Ahsanuddin on drums. All previous recordings, either self-released, for Holy Mountain, or Mexican Summer were done more piecemeal in the band’s rehearsal studio. 2011’s West marked the first time the band recorded in a proper studio. Recorded and mixed in six days at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco with engineer Phil Manley, West was mastered by Sonic Boom at Blanker Unisinn, Brooklyn, with additional mastering by Heba Kadry at the Lodge in New York.
Back To Land, the quartet’s follow-up to West, is the first Wooden Shjips record to be conceived outside of San Francisco. Ripley Johnson and Omar Ahsanuddin moved to Oregon, where the lush climates became a major influence on the songwriting. The band’s scope expanded to include more earthy, grounded tones, such as the acoustic guitar, without abandoning their modernist psych core.
There is an increased brightness to many of the songs on Back To Land, an easiness with which the band has flirted with in the past but never fully realized until now. The nervy urgency of West has evolved into an assured confidence, from the alliterative, interlocking guitar and organ groove of “Ruins” to the languidly compelling guitar solos of “Servants.” The addition of the acoustic guitar to the band’s textural palate is coupled here with some of the most melodically direct songs the band has written.
Still, there are still plenty of signature Shjips songs, with distorted riffs, modal keys, and a steady, crisp drum sound unfolding intensely while the elongated melodic guitar lines drift in and out of the foreground. On Back To Land this energy is captured in clear detail, designed as an immersive experience rather than a passive blasting. Back To Land was laid to tape at Jackpot Recording Studios in Portland by Kendra Lynn and mixed by Larry Crane. It was recorded over an 11-day session, resulting in some of the most detailed and spacious recordings of their career.
Back To Land is a breakthrough record for the Wooden Shjips: nuanced, varied and utterly addictive. The band will be touring extensively in the US and Europe November through February.
BIOGRAPHY
by Thom Jurek/AMG
San Francisco's enigmatically named Wooden Shjips play a minimal, droning brand of garage-styled psychedelia with a noticeable '60s Krautrock influence. The band's vocals slip beneath waves of throbbing minimal rhythms, while fuzztone guitar and shrieking organs jump to the foreground. When bandleader Ripley Johnson assembled the group in 2003, he wasn't interested in playing gigs or becoming famous; rather, his original intention was to find a group of non-musicians for the purposes of creating innovative music. The idea was that untrained players would have a brand new outlook on music and could bring something fresh to the table, perhaps a blend of the often noisy trance rock of the Velvet Underground and the frenetic mania of the one-hit wonder garage punks of the early '60s. Bassman Dusty Jermier, for example, was originally recruited to play sax, an instrument he'd never picked up before. Other members from that first incarnation often had such a lack of interest in playing live, the band hardly bothered looking for gigs.
Eventually, Wooden Shjips whittled themselves down to a more productive lineup comprising Dusty Jermier on trumpet and bass, drummer Omar Ahsanuddin, organ player Nash Whalen, and guitarist/vocalist Johnson. They knew that what they were doing wasn't going to be profitable, but Johnson was a big fan of impenetrable albums and arcane small-press poetry books, having grown fascinated with books that go unread for decades or out of print albums that are finally rediscovered by collectors and praised as lost gems. With that in mind, the band set about making purposely obscure records that Johnson envisioned leaving in libraries, thrift store bargain bins, and on park benches. The band's debut 10" vinyl offering had three tunes: "Shrinking Moon for You" on the A-side and "Death's Not Your Friend" and "Space Clothes," an experiment in musique concrète, on the flip. Eschewing both a MySpace page and a traditional website with MP3 downloads, the band instead gave away the entire pressing of 300 records, even paying the shipping costs for out-of-town requests. A few unexpected rave reviews, including one from Rolling Stone, raised the record's cachet and the band's profile.
The next project was "Dance, California" b/w "Clouds Over the Earthquake," a single that was released in 2006 to celebrate the centennial of the 1906 earthquake. The Shjips sold enough copies to break even and strengthen the band's buzz, which was also propelled by a video for "Dance, California" that featured public domain footage of various cityscapes and girls dancing under a strobe light at a '60s party. Wooden Shjips' third pre-album slab of vinyl was "Summer of Love 2007," a tribute to all the people who worked to make the world a better place -- including people like the Diggers, San Francisco's anarchist collective that founded the first Free Store and served free meals in Golden Gate Park to all hungry mouths. The proceeds of the single went to Food Not Bombs, a group that did similar work, and the band celebrated the single's release with a date opening for psychedelic legend Roky Erickson. It was their second real gig since starting the band.
Wooden Shjips recorded their self-titled first album between March and May of 2007. It was released on a small avant-garde label, Holy Mountain, and produced by Johnson and Jermier under their noms de production of Tedrick G. Rippy and Don Rifle. Furthermore, the album had been recorded in their rehearsal space on a half-inch eight-track console that Jermier found, a strictly analog project aiming at getting a high-quality recording on a low budget. Some tracks were layered up from that demos that Johnson brought in; others, including "Shine Like Suns," were live studio jams with the drum parts added later, since they only had two tracks for the drums and no way to keep the instruments from bleeding into each other. The album dropped in September 2007 and earned The Shjips more rave reviews. Shortly thereafter, they cut another 7" single, "Loose Lips" b/w "Start to Dreaming," this time for the Sub Pop label. The second volume of the band's singles arrived on Sick Thirst in 2010. Simply entitled Vol. 2, it included all the sides cut for the Sub Pop and Mexican Summer imprints, two self-released European tour singles, and a track cut for Yeti magazine. Wooden Shjips seemed to go on a brief hiatus while Johnson and his other band, Moon Duo, released their third offering, Mazes, in the spring of 2011. This was merely cloud cover, however, as WS went back to touring full-time in the summer as a preview for the full-length West, which was issued by Thrill Jockey in the fall. Following West, the band uprooted from their Bay-area home for the rainier surroundings of Portland, Oregon. They returned to their childhood influences of groove-heavy classic rock and spacey textures for 2013's Back to Land.
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