Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

They’ve been going since 2013. Emerging from various permutations of solo and band-related projects by front man and songwriter Si Micklethwaite – evolving from his solo wall-of-pedals shoegaze work as Muttley, through the Muttley Crew collective to eventually coalesce as Soma Crew with guitarist Steve Kendra and drummer Nick Barker, with a rotating cast of contributors along the way. I’ve probably seen – and written about – most of these incarnations of both the band and their forebears, and they’ve never failed to provide music of interest. While the core trio means they’ve always retained their distinctive identity in ways which extend beyond Micklethwaite’s distinctive approach to songwriting – minimal, repetitive, cyclical, hypnotic – the shifting lineups have meant they’ve spent their career continuously evolving. It’s true that the evolution has been slow – a tectonic crawl, in fact, and if you ever meet the band, especially Si, it’s obvious why. These guys are as laid back in their approach as the music they make – and the music they make is psychedelic, hypnotic, slows-burning, hazy.

This latest offering – and it’s been a while since the last one – feel different. Strangely, it feels more overtly rocky. Bit it’s also different in other ways, while at the same time delivering everything you’d expect from these guys.

Confused OK is a long, droning, shimmery blissed-out exploration of all of the territories that Soma Crew love to ramble around: krautrock, drone, and here they bring a country twist to this weirdy retro grooveout. The country twist is very much a new addition to their relentless grooves and tendency to hammer away at a couple of chords for an eternity. And once again, on Confused OK Soma Crew Are seemingly content to batter away at a single chord for an eternity. More bands need to get on board with this.

With the slide guitar splattered all over the nagging bluesy honkytonk rhythm of the first song, ‘These Careless Lips’, they come on like The Doors circa LA Woman, at least musically. But whereas Morrison sounded like a roaring drunk spoiling for a brawl on that messy album, Micklethwaite sounds like he’s more likely to nod off than kick off, his vocals a low, mumbling drawl weaving loosely around the key of the guitars. The second song, ‘Tranquillizer’ is appropriately titled and is quintessential Soma Crew: seven and a half minutes of reverb-drenched tripped-out motorik drift. The intro hints at some kind of build, but once all the elements are on board, it’s a magically spaced-out kaleidoscopic spin where relentless repetition becomes inescapably hypnotic.

Flamboyant solos, guitar breaks… they’re so unnecessary, so much wanking. There’s none of that crap here: the extended instrumental breaks plumb away forever and a day, the guitars peeling off shards of feedback and tremulous layers of effects while the drums and bass stick tightly to the same locked groove.

The production on Confused OK is murky, hazy, the separation between instruments is, well, it’s all in the mix, which coalesces to create a fuzzy fog which recreates the sound of the late ‘60s, and it works so, so well.

Expanding their style further, ‘Let it Fall’ is a three-and-a-half minute slice of indie pop with a vintage sixties psychedelic feel, and it’s followed by the downtempo mellowness of ‘This Illusion’, before ‘Another Life’ goes all out for the blues rock swagger with a glammy stomp behind it. With the lyrics so difficult to decipher, it’s impossible to unravel the link between ‘The Sheltering Sky’ and Paul Bowles’ novel, although no doubt there is one, and here, they really cut loose with some wild guitar as Si sings up for a change over this hypnotic throbbing boogie.

Sprawling over seven minutes in a mess of reverb and distortion, ‘Propaganda Now’ closes the album off with a pulsating groove and an effervescent energy, fitting with its call to wake up and small the bullshit. Because it’s time. Sure, the Johnson / Trump ‘post-truth’ era may have given rise to the wildest frenzy of right-wing conspiracy theory, but now we know – we KNOW – that we’ve been lied to and fed a conveyor belt of bullshit… the pandemic was real, the fear was real, but our government partied hard while we were all trapped in lockdown, and their cronies made MILLIONS, nay, BILLIONS from backhanders and dodgy contracts for dodgy kit that never reached a soul. And now, the cost of living crisis, attributed to the war in Ukraine, has seen energy companies and supermarkets record record profits – because among it all, profits have been protected at all costs – namely at cost to customers while CEOs and shareholders rake it in.

Confused OK may sound like a mellow droner of an album on the surface, probably because it is. But is has detail, it has texture, and it has depth. It’s also their strongest work to date.