Totem Songs
Headdress : Turquoise (US,2007)***
Just as the song tracks are listed a tepee illustration, it is as if Headdress settled down with a tepee in the Sonoran desert.
The singing is melancholically pushed in the background by its own melancholic undertone in the recording feedback, in a hazy sad state, overseeing some lost games for fertilization in nature, expressed by a poisoning injection of the melancholic rock of Neil Young, slowed down by its side-effects, it keeps its recognisable dozing effect of a portion of West Coast mood.
Soft percussion and amplified guitar drone on, while a guitar is strumming forward like pushing its pulses through a dried up river, around the same chords over and over. The desert landscape is in the music.
With a sad hiss feeling in the throat, spining, a harmonica sounds haunts like slowly prepared attacks from armed mosquitoes. 'Mesquite' is the word, drunk by the desert evening, soaked in its acidic or dried-up nature. The sound of next morning brings a a mandolin. Acoustic guitars repeat the themes indoors. Then a ride-on-a-horse-(-with no name-)-rhythm meanders in the next song, while whistling and tambourine accompany it as well.
On another track, a coyote imitator sings far in the distance, wooden crackles and clicks are like a fire imitator playing with wood, another droning pulse of amplified guitar dominates its melancholy. But the sadness doesn’t take it over.
A bit more electrified guitar becomes bluesy and improvised.
The last track, “Arizona” shows a small portion of a field recording with birds.
With their own words : “Turquoise was recorded in a hollow hill in the grasslands of the Sonoran desert under the moon of shedding ponies while wandering around and living out of our recreational vehicle 'the golden horse' aka 'Goldie'."
Limited to 250 copies.
