Wipers - Land Of The Lost (1986)

O grupie The Wipers pisałem już wcześniej dlatego nie chcąc się powtarzać odsyłam do dawnego posta. Powiem tylko, że prezentowany album jest moim zdaniem najlepszym studyjnym dokonaniem zespołu.

Land of the Lost marks the beginning of what I usually refer to as the monochrome period in the Wipers' catalogue, a string of albums that taught me diversity and colourfulness are all too often considered (and expected) essential ingredients for a successful album. It's not that the Wiperss first three albums were all-over-the-place exercises in diversity, but they all had their own, different feel and featured songs that covered almost opposite parts of the musical spectrum, ranging from short and raw punk bursts to epics that showed Sage was one of the few musicians getting away with extended solos in an age when that was not done anymore. It took the Wipers (on this album: Sage, bassist Brad Davidson and drummer Steve Plouf) three years to release this album and even though that's quite long for an album of a good half hour of plain guitar-rock, it also shows they've mastered their "new" style perfectly. It still sounds like the Wipers of before, but it's the first time they released an album that almost seems like one extended song. Some people would call it monotony, but if you can maintain a certain mood and sound throughout an entire album and make it an almost hypnotic experience instead of a drag, you're onto something. On Land of the Lost, Sage & Co. sound like Television, if that band had been more concise and based in Arizona instead of New York. The mood's melancholic and dark, yet never depressing, while the combination of Sage's vocals, his gritty guitar style and the trance-like grooves of Plouf and Davidson cause it to constantly contain both beauty and force, soothing hypnosis and jarring aggression. It's a peculiar combination and there are very few bands capable of sustaining something like this for longer than a few songs.

Brad Davidson - Bass
Steve Plouf - Drums
Greg Sage - Guitar, Vocals

It's music that's perfectly suited for long car trips, repetitive yet never descending into blandness. It's almost stunning how simple most of these songs seem - just a few basic chord progressions, endlessly repeated riffs and Sage's plaintive vocals on top of it. However, the guitar sound - often a beefy, distorted guitar playing the riff, with a clearer one adding accents on top of it - ensures you'll soon be part of a trip. In "Just a Dream Away," for instance, you will hardly notice the transitions from versus to chorus and back anymore. It's all part of the same trip. Some songs are faster and more aggressive ("Way of Love," "Fair Weather Friends," which seems indebted to early Gun Club), but even those continue the groove that's set by the dominant, mid-paced tempos. While each song in itself shows enough identity, the album as a whole meanders from riff to riff, even though its second half offers more diverse sounds, from the gentler dream-like playing of "Nothing Left to Lose" and the nearly-whispered vocals of "Different Ways," to the new wave melancholy of "Just Say," which points forward to the culmination of this approach, Silver Sail. This album remains a special listening experience and album, one without obvious highlights towering above the remaining tracks. Even though I've heard it dozens of times, it still sounds as mysterious as the first time when I put it on and if you'd play me just one song, I perhaps wouldn't be able to tell you its location on the track list. It's not the kind of album you'll advise anyone to check out, because it's so hard to put your finger on what it is that makes this album work, but once you've been turned onto Sage's vision, Land of the Lost is bound to become a minor guitar classic in your book as well (still a damn ugly cover, though). (guypetersreviews.com)

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