Pink Skies

' second album for , , sees the Connecticut quartet taking their already heavy psychedelic sound into a new realm that's more formless, free, and intense. While their previous record, , was super-noisy, guitar-heavy, and meandering, a handful of almost snappy pop songs seemed to have been left over from the band's earlier incarnation. Now, they've jettisoned the songs almost entirely to let guitarist go nuts while the rest of the band locks into heady, gently propulsive grooves behind her. She squalls, feeds back, twists notes into fuzzy pretzels, explores tones, and basically wrings every drop of sound out of her guitar, while never doing anything rote or remotely boring. As before, there are a couple of very long songs on , and is able to hold the listener's interest for their entirety. It helps that the other bandmembers aren't just aimlessly jamming; instead, they sound like a properly cared-for machine that's working at peak capacity. Drummer drives the songs forward while also crafting safe landing spaces out of cymbal hiss and rumbling floor tom; bassist holds things together admirably; and 's rhythm guitar churns alongside while also providing texture and additional colorings to the abstract, free-form pieces. As an example, at the end of the fairly epic "The Other Side of Today," the two guitarists work together like twin siblings, matching feedback to distorted rhythms and generating enough sparks to heat a large warehouse on a winter day. It's not all avant psych freakouts ("Freeway") and -like meditations ("Bridge to This World," "Heavenly Forest") on though. did write a few songs, and while they aren't super-hooky, they do help give the album some structure. "This City" is a creeping, eerie crawl through the streets at night; "Snow Drift" is a bleak, slow-motion jam; and "My Eyes Are Always Heavy" treads on earthy proto-metal territory until 's guitar sends the song spiraling off into space. The album is a daring step past the constraints of songs and into pure sound, and the quartet members are strong enough players to make it work -- especially and her extraordinary guitar work. ~ Tim Sendra