Grails: Take Refuge in Clean Living

Last years release by Grails, Burning Off Impurities, was an amazing psychedelic through world cultures, down the silk road and on into the far east. It mixed Arabian, Indian, and Oriental influences and instruments with the style of American folk, blues, and drone that the band had developed on earlier releases. The band's latest album, Take Refuge in Clean Living is a supposedly a full-length release, but since it only has five tracks that amount to about a half an hour of music (last years album was 8 songs, fifty minutes) I'm more inclined to view this as an EP. It's this fact that makes me less disappointed in the album, that, while still an excellent collection of music, doesn't quite live up to the bar set last year by the album. The album starts strongly, "Stoned at the Taj Again" ranks among the band's best material, with it's subtle sitar accents and a sweet drone guitar, throbbing bass combination. The next songs don't fare quite as well, "PTSD" is a directionless, rambling electric guitar mess and "11th Hour", while interesting, really doesn't draw you back for more listens. "Take Refuge" improves on the last two tracks drastically, with a similar style to the opening song, but it lacks the subtle exotic instrumentation that makes the band so great. "Clean Living" closes that album on a puzzling note, with a nearly six minute long ambient drone track that is mostly strings and piano and sounds more like something from The Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble than from Grails. Again, it's not that this is a bad album, it's just that, the opening track aside, it doesn't have the dynamic tunes that it's predecessor had. There's no creepy banjo waltzes like "Soft Temple" or aggressive romps like "Dead Vine Blues", just some unfocused, meandering songs that have potential, but fail to deliver on them. But again, I see this as an EP, not a full-length, and EPs are notorious for experimentation, so let's hope that's all this is.
Listen ("Stoned at the Taj Again")