The Gray Goo – 1943

 

 

The Gray Goo – 1943
Self released – 2022
Rock, Psych, Prog, Funk, Jazz, Fusion, Doom
Rated: ****

The first four tracks of the debut album 1943 by Montana trio The Gray Goo were released as a demo EP in 2021; but they pale in comparison to the sound quality and extra little explorations of the new versions. Once again, we wonder how much, master mastering engineer Tony Reed had his fingers in The Gray Goo cake. For it sounds so much more scrumptious and fuller, those four songs and the remaining three tracks, that you will be completely fulfilled by the time the forty minutes runtime is over. The over 10-minute-long opener Bicycle Day will immediately show you The Gray Goo colors, the psychedelic rock, turning into a funky and laidback ska offering on the turn of a dime and then screeching forwards to a psychedelic and jazzy extrapolation before going off into a wild freak out rock tantrum. The wild vocals enter the scene on second track Problem Child, which goes the way of the seventies psych rock and might sound like an easy ingestible rocker after those Beefheart & Zappa like beginnings. But don’t worry, cause just as you get accustomed to that golden age rock, the track starts turning a more doom metal corner. See, nothing is as it seems with The Gray Goo, or at least not for long. I mean, you can start off doing H, thinking about ‘little kids shooting marbles, where branches break the sun’, when Launch starts, but before you can nod off, you’re off into a wild Arabian tinged, kraut rocking, disco adventure. Following fourth song The Comedown, feels indeed like a comedown, to get you from the high bar into a slow-moving tilt-a-whirl or worn down couch trying to relight your cigarette. Don’t worry about those dancing clowns in the corner, they might just be your imagination, or they might be here because they heard about the amazing milkshakes you serve. Shakes And Spins takes that Comedown thing to the next level, with what comes across as spoken word vocals; slowly mesmerizing turning the dream into a nightmare; or one of those sleep paralysis states that you can’t wake up from… But in the end, the album will feel like a dream and not a nightmare; a beautiful dream you could never imagine in a thousand nods. The sound will come in heat waves, soaking through your body, out your fingertips in shafts of color, and you will know, somewhere in the world, somewhere…  

(Written by JK)

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