Album Review: Wooden Shjips - Dos

San Francisco's Wooden Shjips emerged on their first album with a manifesto for a simpler music. They had glimpsed the truth and it had two chords. Their first album charted the path to stoner nirvana through a set of tracks which all found their groove and stuck with it. And it really worked.

You'll be delighted to hear that there has been no surprise change of direction, no loss of artistic confidence. Dos, from its no-nonsense title onwards, rolls on down the same road. This is the second instalment in an epic mission to blow minds and scorch souls.  If this sounds like a lack of imagination from the Shjips, it's clear that they feel no need to improve on an already perfect formula. It's very hard to argue with their judgement.

In interview they reference experimental minimalist composers such as Terry Riley and proto-punk guitar bands like the Stooges, The Seeds and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Minimalism has lent them its absolute focus on the sounds that matter, paring their music down to the bone. Proto-punk has contributed dirty, monothilic riffs that loom out of the speakers. Krautrock has also surely been involved, teaching them to play variations around the same structure over the course of 11.27 mins. And their music wouldn't sound the way it does if they weren't operating in the wake of doom rock drone merchants like Earth and Sunn.

Psych-rock petered out in the early 70s in a morass of self indulgence. Wooden Shjips have rewound the clock to the point when things started to go out of shape, and shown how it should have been done. The real secret to their music is its tight rhythm and shape. The songs on Dos have plenty of drive, powered by a Neu-style, chugging motorik beat. It's all about the forward flow, whereas psych has a tendency to thow the beats out with the bathwater. This momentum makes Dos a deeply compelling record, matching rhythm with fuzz guitar solo-ing and a drone that powers its way deep inside your skull. Track range move from the thundering bass and disintegrating soloing of from 'The Weight' to pulsing Farfisa and sludge-mired guitars on 'Fallin'.

It shouldn't be this good, but I guarantee you'll for the hypnotic spell of Dos. Wooden Shjips are playing the festival circuit this summer, and you couldn't invent a better band for bopped down, zoned out, festival oneness.