Music to wilt to.
Experiments conducted by the California Academy of Sciences demonstrated that plants react to certain vibrations. Michael Perry, music licensing company PPL PRS’s gardening expert, says the beats of jazz and classical mimic vibrations found in the natural world, promoting growth.
If the traditional instrumentation of jazz and classical music can grow plants, then the atonal, fuzzed-out sonic goop of Psychic Graveyard’s Wilting LP, would assuredly wilt a plant straight to a psychic grave.
That being said, I am not a plant and am known to enjoy certain goops every now and then.
Psychic Graveyard, featuring Eric Paul on vocals, Charles Ovett on drums and Paul Vieira and Nathan Joyner on guitar, is a San Diego noise-rock band returning with Wilting, their fourth solo effort since 2019’s Loud as Laughter.
Although littered with nonsensical noise, largely unintelligible lyrics and songs that mostly follow an unchanging strophic form, Wilting demonstrates that boundary-pushing experimentation is still given opportunities to thrive. This reaffirms that high-pitched beeping over a droning muddy synth is an artform that’s alive and well.
Each track stands with its own identity, with their own looping melody that hypnotizes the listener, making them nod along while simultaneously thinking: “oh hell yeah, this fucking sucks.”
The eighth track, “Scar in the Shape of the United States,” begins with an instant assault of sound. A rapidly modulating synth carries the melody while high-pitch nervous beeps run and halt at alternating bars like a game of ‘red light green light,’ only to come back seemingly louder than the first time after a moment of rest.
Underneath it all are drums that never let up, with a frantic stomping of the high-hat accented with the beating of crash cymbals that begin during the beeping’s rest; the whole shitshow overdubbed with distorted vocals.
This is the song. For two minutes and 48 seconds, that is the song. The only discrepancy is a break from the mess, overlaid with a new rhythmic midi-beeping that lulls you into a false sense of security until it threatens to burst your eardrums again.
These three minutes are over quickly. Despite the song repeating itself for most of its duration with no discernable lead voice, the aggressive personality and polyphonic texture prevent it from getting stale. Each element is so powerful on its own and comes with notable intricacies and quirks so that each burst of noise sounds unique when you focus on another aspect.
This method of production is present on the whole album and allows each song to stand out. Although the same core instruments are used throughout, each track is distinct in the noisescape it develops. The songs don’t expand much on defining their instrumentation, but the cleverly-crafted production keeps you glued through the dense layering of sound.
The only track where this style falls flat is on the fifth track, “Lives The Size of An Eyelash.” Whereas other tracks feature clashing lead vocals that allow the listener to pick and choose what aspect to focus on, the instruments on “Eyelash,” don’t fight for dominance or work together-, but rather work around each other.
The result is an uncoordinated vomit of noise-, everything seems like it’s coming out from everywhere all at once and you feel great once it’s over. A slow pulsatile drum beat of ‘kick then crash, kick, kick then crash, kick then crash, crash, repeat,’ dominates the whole song while a screeching, techno wail fades in and out. This is crammed beside distorted, whiny vocals which you can’t understand because of the messy production then when you actually put effort into listening because they are drowned out by the other crap going on around you.
Wilting is the unfortunate definition of entertaining music that you cannot show to other people. I enjoyed taking my time listening to it at my own pace, making notes, going back and forth and putting effort into understanding it, but if someone played it while I was driving I would slowly start drifting into the oncoming lane to join my wilted plants in the psychic afterlife.
7/10
Lucas Bustinski for The B-Side
