Grandiose – The Oil Barons (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

A few years ago, everything was relabeling itself as alt-country. More recently, Americana was the tag of choice. But perhaps if everyone had followed The Oil Barons‘ lead and headed down a path called “Psychedelic Western Doom Rock,” today’s musical landscape might be a bit more interesting. Maybe.

Well, even though that never happened, at least we have albums like their latest, Grandiose,to indulge such fantasies. It is an album that tends to wander the same fringes as those accursed genres above, but it does so further west, closer to hell, and while sporting a purple fringed-buckskin jacket, wyvern-scale cowboy boots, silver loon pants, and gold-tinted aviator glasses. Probably.

Their take on country-rock emphasizes the rock element, a hard, heavy, and heavenly sound, but also incorporates a notable amount of swampy blues, spaced-out psychedelia, gothic shade, trippy groove and any other sonic extreme that takes their fancy.

“Gloria” takes the sort of sound that The Grateful Dead would have bonded instantly with you over, only pushed to even more lysergic extremes, eventually becomeing a skewed and screwed up version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (which they would also have loved you for.) “Shinola” is big and punchy and stacatto and anthemic, “Death Hangs” sounds like the funeral dirge for the Summer of Love and the title track, which rounds things off, is strange, changable and beautiful, ebbing and flowing between the domineering and the delicate in a way that makes them sound like an American roots take on Syd-era Pink Floyd.

I listen to dozens of tracks and albums a day, and most just drift off into the ether, quickly forgotten once my work is done. Not Grandoise…this is going straight onto that rare stack of records that make it to the “to be played again, regularly and loudly” pile.