Back in the dwindling, summer month of August I started an internship with Kill Rock Stars that led to the unexpected discovery of my favorite record of the season – Wooden Wand’s Second Attention. Not only did it mark an impressive divergence to a less freak, more folk approach - but my introduction to the Wand’s newest acid palmed collective of kindred spirits – The Skyhigh Band.
Listen to the Skygreen Leopards song Disciples of California, off the album Disciples of California while you read this review! Click on the play button in the Galaxy Media Player above and to the right.
Not long after, as the trees adopted amber hues and witnessed their leaves fall prey to the subtle seduction of the fall winds that signaled Summer’s end, another new endeavor (hint, hint) unexpectedly brought the Skyhigh band back to near worship status. This time by means of their Jehovah-less endeavors as the Skygreen Leopards. Even music isn’t without its own subtle coincidences.
While at its songwriting core - the psych-duo, founded by Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn, remains just that, a duo, Disciples… finds the pair, for the first time, backed by their folk seasoned Skyband. The record, the band’s sixth full length offering is, in it’s own way both a collection of THC emboldened, back porch folk meanderings as spacious the rising smoke off some of the West coast’s finest and a simple, endearing acoustically themed pop ode to the metaphysical wonders of the Golden State’s multifarious terrain.
The new Skyband additions of bass, drums, pianos and the occasional banjo plant the Leopards somewhere more between the countrified jangle of Americana and the feel-good notions of blue skies pop than ever before. The previous psychedelic leanings aren’t absent as much as they're simply relegated to the foreground where they remain cautious undertones to the surprisingly cohesive songs. Their underlying presence keeps the guitar strumming lazily blissful and prevents the laissez faire, lo-fi ambience from becoming overly rigid or sequenced.
Even amid the pop leanings and discernable choruses they still feel relaxed enough to suggest that any notion of pop structuring could still, at any moment, deconstruct itself back into an organic tribal jam. It embodies an ideology that dictates none of these songs could ever be played the same twice as they seem draw almost as much inspiration from their surroundings as they do to the notes they are comprised of.
Overall Disciples of California is a breezy bit of California pop with its roots planted in rich folk soil. It's replete with the sunset romanticism of a seaside embrace and the barefoot tendresse of a sun soaked afternoon where ennui turns to ecstasy and time spent doing nothing, isn’t only that, it’s plain beautiful.
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