Weedpecker – IV: The Stream Of Forgotten Thoughts

Waveriders I hate to begin a music review by talking about a visual. I can hear many of you now. “Pictures don’t matter bro! Nothing matters except the music!” Allow me to say that I agree with you. Wholeheartedly! But let’s just take a second and look at this album cover. We have a humanoid creature with a squirrel’s head waving at us. Correction, part of a squirrel’s head. The top of this creature’s head is the sun, which also has a human face on it. Outside of that we have skeleton musicians, geometric patterns, and hot air balloons where the inflatable bits are a brain and a heart. This my friends, is truth in advertising! What you expect this album to sound like? That is exactly what this album sounds like!

 

I was exposed to the world of Weedpecker when three of their four full length albums were being sold for under $10 each on a site I frequent called The Laser’s Edge (www.lasercd.com). This band was recommended by someone whose taste I generally agree with so I investigated. In the end I didn’t act quickly enough to order from The Laser’s Edge. Instead I bought all four of Weedpecker’s albums straight from the group’s bandcamp page. IV: The Stream Of Forgotten Thoughts is decidedly my favorite album of the bunch!

 

To my ears, and prepare yourselves because this may come as a shock based off their name, Weedpecker started out as a fairly straight down the middle stoner rock ensemble. The band’s focus on pronounced melodic flourishes along with dreamy/spacey vocals really does set them apart from other acts in the genre to my ears however. They evolved through their albums to add substantially more classic rock and psychedelic elements to the mix, with a heaping helping of progressive tendencies for good measure. Speaking of those evolved elements, it is a joy to listen to this album and pick out the auditory winks and nods.

The album starts with an appropriate Black Sabbath-worshipping bang with the chugging riff of “No Heartbeat Collective”. “Big Brain Monsters” sounds like Perry Farrell singing for Jimi Hendrix. “Endless Extensions Of Good Vibrations” is built upon a solid Pink Floyd foundation. Actually, quite a few of these songs have a solid Pink Floyd-like foundation! “The Trip Treatment” culminates in a fantastic Eric Clapton-sounding guitar solo. Most every song contains psychedelic-era Beatles-esque vocals. What I’m trying to make evident is that this album is one potent musical concoction that will have a broad range of appeal to anyone reading these words.

 

My fellow waveriders, I beseech you! If you have not heard of or listened to Weedpecker, stop what you are doing and get familiarized right now! Each time I listen to IV: The Stream Of Forgotten Thoughts I find myself repeating the same superlatives. This is one of the best albums I’ve heard in recent memory! The guitar work is superior! The vocals are intoxicating! Grab yourself a copy and start forming your superlatives today!

 

-Penfold