"you make it up as you go"
Stray Owls are, by any definition, strange birds and and I don't think that Matthew French and Scott Griffiths would have it any other way. They gleefully plug their acoustics and electric into pedal boards galore and make truly divergent sounds. A kind of self described "perpetually damaged fuzz folk" although to me it feels full on post punk with elements of folk, yes, but grunge too and art rock, maybe porch art rock but art rock just the same. Lest I forget, drummer and engineer Jerry Kee is a major part of the sound here. A sound that I thoroughly enjoy for so many reasons but the main reason is that it is strange (divergent) in the best possible way.
The track, JetLag, from their latest full length, "Stray Owls versus Time and Space", is a heavy experience. It is steeped in psychedelia but also feels like the kind of wailing rock that emanates from a ram-shackled barn. You will only understand this if you have lived in the south (feigned laughter). I love the big monstrous sound here, the lead work and pounding drums. I also love the musical narrative here. It feels at once like a sort of 'high' through a forest that opens up to open fields or swimming holes on another planet. The downbeat swing has one emotional tug and the big awesome rock diversions another. It is a dizzy, heady shoegaze-esque mix, feeling like Neil Young and Jon Dwyer from The Oh Sees are jamming while having the drink, smoke of their choice.
Of the trippy "JetLag" official video, the band offers:
"New cartoon sci-fi music video give fascism the middle finger!"
This is the part of the review when I steal from myself. I have written about this marvelous band before (once or twice) and previously I wrote:
"North Carolina's Stray Owls have a sort of broken sound but, wait... I mean that as a compliment. There is a certain reticence in their rock, a raw imperfect perfection, street smarts and a tendency to like things that feel a bit off. Just listen to Words that have a kind of crashing sound of Pixies and Miracle Legion blended together. A heavy but sort of tender 90's College rock tone. Folk rock chords played punk style with jagged lead lines that stray so far from anything Jimmy Page could even imagine."
I wanted to share this because I don't know if I can say it any better this time (and I love the last line). But I will say this, as I am writing this track review I am listening to the album and it is a fucking glorious thing. It deserves a full review and I only hope that I have time to do one soon.
Bravo boys.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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STRAY OWLS
The owls are not what they seem.
Like any fringe act worth following, Stray Owls shouldn't work. Matthew French and Scott Griffiths plug their acoustic/electrics into the type of pedalboards that usually fuel post-rock or doom-worthy riffs but instead create agitated, perpetually damaged fuzz-folk. Drummer and engineer Jerry Kee, who joined as a full member after 2017's A Series of Circles, knows which spaces to fill and which to leave. Indeed, Stray Owls strikes an almost paradoxical balance: warmth in the organic chop of acoustic guitars and consoling drive of Kee's drumming; anxiety in the gulf where a bass instrument would go, indicating the hollow heart each of us feels as we contemplate the cold truths of life — and the terror of its impermanence.
Appropriate to its title, second LP Stray Owls vs. Time and Space finds this Mebane trio with its toes in the North Carolina Piedmont clay, but its head way, way above the clouds. Intro "Miles" is as patient, immersive, and spacious as Spiritualized, but is immediately followed by the unassuming pop-craft of "Words." Griffiths' digitally mangled voice reads the Latin names of trees on half-delirious instrumental "Lower Case of the Mondays," while Cory Griffiths (she and Scott are married) plays clarinet on "Cory's Interlude" and sings harmony on "Dislocation." Kee is on the mic for the unassuming slacker shuffle of "Something Like Hope," while the unapologetically crunchy "Bipolaroid" finds Stray Owls kneeling at the crossroads/altar of math rock and Sabbath with French on vocal duties. The album sounds and feels like three people thriving in the same head space and is a natural progression and solid evolutionary leap for the band. Indeed, having fully welcomed and incorporated Kee as a full-time member for the past few years — Stray Owls takes an active role in its own evolution on Stray Owls vs. Time and Space.
Again — the owls are not what they seem.
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