4 out of 5

Label: digital self-release

“…This ain’t your grandaddy’s Skullflower!” or somesuch: ‘Iguana Liver on Tropical Refuge’ features a clear beat, y’all, and not, like, any beat, but almost a dub one? It’s wild. It’s still Skullflower: this has been processed through decades of reverb and is like, backmasked or something, but still: you get drugged up psych guitar twaddle atop this sludged up dub beat, and it’s a wild foray into something you’d find as an interstitial track on a 90s Matador release or whatever, yet perfectly couched between some Bower noise classics.

So those classics are your grandaddy’s SF, and fit the usual(-ish) twofer of one guitar overdrive-focused track, and one psych-forward track. Opener beige beagle is the former, and does a triptych attach over its 17-minutes, with a kind of hovering guitar over a loose background melody for the first third, then bringing up a feedback-echo layer in its midsection, going full force combo of the two (with an extra rough layer of awesome distortion) for the final part. It’s pretty epic, it just slightly whiffs the transition from part two to three, like Bower hits the effects pedal slightly off beat for it to land. It feels more abrupt than it should; though once you know to expect it – pretty golden.

Brown Cornelian Tent is a slim 7.5 minute psych noise assault. Old reliable.