Medicine Singers

A collaboration between Eastern Algonquin powwow group and guitarist/producer/ex- member , find no shortage of surreal beauty and unlikely combinations of style and sound on their self-titled debut album. Though most songs use the powwow drums and group vocals as the core focus, the music lifts off when these foundational elements meet with contributions from a wide range of improvisers, experimentalists, and all stripes of musicians not usually associated with the ancestral traditions of powwow music or its modern-day forms. Bandleader steadily guides the vocalists and percussionists as and a host of talented friends sprawl out in all directions around them. The results are almost always psychedelic, in ways that range from jarring and abrasive to transcendently beautiful. The uneasy "Daybreak" disrupts call-and-response chants with blasts of distorted electronics while more subdued instruments simmer in the background. 's frenetic, surf-psych guitar style that defined the sound of his former band shows up mostly as accents in this and many of the other tunes, taking a more central role only sometimes, as on "Sunrise (Rumble)," a reworking of the classic expanded to include noisy synths and driving powwow drums. veers into dizzying digital wildness ("Shapeshifter," "Hawk Song") but is grounded by contributions from trumpeter . Her presence on "Sanctuary" is the peak of the album, as her extended trumpet solo soars to the top of the mix and reflects back all the sadness, struggle, and hope of the song over 's rolling drums and supportive backing from understated electric piano, bass clarinet, and various mellow electronics. also shines on "Sunset," the contemplative penultimate track. In addition to her spiritually moving trumpet and 's psycho-surf guitar playing, the arrangements are filled out with electronics from no wave pioneer , marimba from , a barrage of synth waves from ' , zither from new age fixture , and more. It all gels into an almost supernatural sound, one that can feel tormented, comforting, beautiful, or mournful within the same track. ~ Fred Thomas