GARCIA PEOPLES - Nightcap At Wits’ End

Having evolved from a trio to a sextet, Garcia Peoples are heirs to that American tradition whose primary historical touchstones are Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead and The Band.

The expansion of the lineup has gone hand in hand with a growing attention to composition and balance among the elements, a choice that, without sacrificing the enthusiasm of their early days, cements the new album “Nightcap At Wits' End” as the most complete and original record by the New Jersey band.

Despite a stylistic formula that often needs a live setting to reveal its full character and broader appeal, the music of Garcia Peoples doesn’t suffer when committed to record — if anything, it becomes fertile ground for unexpected and interesting developments, as demonstrated on this, the band’s fifth album.

In just two years since their debut “Cosmic Cash”, the American band has built up a repertoire that is engaging and never bland or predictable. “Nightcap At Wits' End” not only confirms the consistent quality of their songwriting but also shows a more varied approach that opens up new horizons.

The powerful, heavy tone of the opener “Gliding Through” is breathtaking, thanks to a structure poised between heavy metal and progressive rock that still leaves room for guitar flourishes with a slightly grunge/blues-rock edge.

It's the guitars that remain the protagonists of the album's varied suggestions, starting with the lysergic modern transposition of Bay Area psychedelia, the kind that runs from Jefferson Airplane to Grateful Dead, animating the excellent "Wasted Time", a track that also pays significant tribute to the wonderful vocal interplay of CSN&Y.

But the surprises don't end there: Garcia Peoples offer a fine homage to the charm of English folk in the elaborate harmonic and lyrical progression of "Altered Place" and in the even more refined "Painting A Vision That Carries", a precious ballad that blends fingerpicked chords, mandolin sounds and guitar flourishes worthy of Pete Townshend.

What might seem like the preserve of a sizeable crowd of nostalgics turns out to be vibrant, contemporary material: "Nightcap At Wits' End" delivers those evolutions that Ryley Walker has long been chasing, with good results, and an ambition matched by the willingness to put themselves on the line and experiment with new solutions, aided too by the alternating voices (Danny Arakaki, Derek Spaldo and Tom Malach) who lend spirited support to the songs' polychromy, at times not free of cliché (the West Coast-ish "One At A Time", "Crown Of Thought"); despite this, the songs are ready to defy convention, embracing the darkness of math-rock on "(Our Life Could Be Your Van)", the contamination born of the band's love affair with kraut-rock on "(Sound Controls Time)", right up to brushing against chaos in the controlled cacophony of "(Litmus)". This final trio of bolder-toned tracks frames the second half of the album, a sequence that spills into an experimentally-tinged jam session, with a magical "A Reckoning" that drags the folk suggestions into the arms of Popul Vuh, and a bucolic, unsettling psych-folk ballad, "Shadow", which seals the band's most complete and ambitious album.

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15/11/2020