Charnel Ground – Charnel Ground

“Charnel Ground is a super-group, of sorts, combining the considerable talents of Kid Millions (Oneida, Man Forever) on drums, Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine, Consonant, etc.) on guitar and James McNew (Yo La Tengo) on bass. Just that amount of background is probably enough to tell you whether you want to hear this album — and you do — and that’s fortunate because it’s pretty much all the background anyone’s getting. We know that the music was recorded in Brooklyn by these three musicians in late 2016, and that is pretty much all we know. That blankness of backstory allows, even forces us to focus on the music, always the best course of action. The music, all instrumental, abstract, driving, blistering and, at times, lyrical, can absolutely support scrutiny all by itself. It brings together the best of all three principals – the furious percussive energies of Kid Millions, Brokaw’s slow arcs and haunting echoes of guitar tone, McNew’s nodding, pulsing, hypnotic hum of bass. The album’s two longest tracks work the strongest alchemy. “The High Price” rampages furiously on for more than 10 minutes, bending guitar effects into screaming rainbows, pummelling rackety beats into bloody, rapturous submission, plummeting into wild, celebratory excess but pulling up well short of chaos. “Charnel Ground” is a whole other experience, an aura of soft guitar notes and cymbal vibrations set into gentle motion by McNew’s steady, head-nodding bass. It’s like the dreamiest sort of Yo La Tengo instrumental pushed a little bit further from melody/verse/chorus.Of the shorter tracks, “Jimmy” is the most obliterating, scatter-shooting rounds of percussion into giant amp-altered girders of guitar sound, “Skeleton Coast” has the off-hand, unhurried grace of a Bedhead instrumental, and “Playa de Ticia” is just odd, a mariachi beach band tune kidnapped and shoehorned into the sequence. And yet, with these three guys, the inclination is to let them do whatever they want. Why not, after all? They’ve earned it and the results are mostly stunning.” – Jennifer Kelly

Label: 12XU – 12XU 107-1

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album

Country: US

Released: 2018

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