The living Dead
Psychedelic upstarts stretch out even further. By John Mulvey. Garcia Peoples ★★★★ Nightcap At Wits’ End BEYOND BEYOND IS BEYOND. CD/DL/LP
MOST OF US are probably uncertain what happens at a Phish gig, let alone after it.
At the death of 2019, the much-loved and much-reviled jam band rolled into Madison Square Garden for a four-night stand of improvisation and japery; who knows, cosmically, where many of the audience were transported? On December 30, though, a few of them adjourned to Le Poisson Rouge, in Greenwich Village, for an aftershow gig featuring the avant-rock correlative to Phish’s freeform exploits. Ryley Walker topped the bill, joined by the guitarist Chris Forsyth and a younger band from New Jersey whose giddy virtuosity had already made them darlings of what we might tentatively refer to as the indie-jam scene. They were called Garcia Peoples, and it wasn’t just the Grateful Dead allusion in their name that made them so easy to love for a diverse crowd of heads: here was a band with the energy, skill and positivity to keep the party going all night long.
In just over two years, Garcia Peoples have released four albums, been captured on innumerable bootlegs, and become cheerful, tireless standard-bearers for this small but exciting musical cult. If 2019’s One Step Behind focused on a 32-minute mathematical freakout, Nightcap At Wits’ End is punchier and more accessible, while still showcasing the sextet’s psychedelic bona fides – check, for a start, the brown acid Yellow Submarine graphics on the sleeve. The Dead influence remains, of course; the ceremonial grandeur of Terrapin Station might be a decent reference point for something like Crown Of Thought.
But from the opening lurch of Gliding Through, there’s a more bombastic edge this time – a bit of role-swapping within the band now means three guitars to the fore – and a sense that these insatiable music scholars have zeroed in on a spot at the cusp of the ’70s where psychedelia, folk and nascent prog interweaved in fruitful ways. While the brackish fingerpicking that opens A Reckoning immediately summons Led Zeppelin’s III, other antecedents are more esoteric: a hint of Quintessence here, of Dando Shaft there; the stateliness of Popol Vuh. Most noticeably of all, there is a heavy whiff of Mighty Baby to the likes of Wasted Time, a rococo grooviness that’s at once astral and earthy.
As with their previous records, the vocals – split between guitarists Danny Arakaki, Derek Spaldo and, occasionally, Tom Malach – are the weakest point; the melodies can be too quick, too high, too ambitious for their voices to cope. It’s a small quibble, though, in the face of such ornate and torrential jams. Side two is a continuous stream of music, a suite seemingly held together less by conceptual pretension and more by natural exuberance. When you sound this joyful and fluent playing together as a band, Garcia Peoples imply, why would you want to stop, even for a moment?