Walking Bombs Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 Review
Walking Bombs comes on like the bastard offspring of Black Flag and Ween. The “band” is a one-human songwriting and recording project spearheaded by Morgan Y. Evans and a cadre of musical co-conspirators wielding instruments typical and rare, from guitar to djembe, weird synths and organs that does not have a specific musical genre in which it specializes.
These recordings feel as though they were captured in the heat of the moment and while their less-than polished, lo-fi home recording approach may be initially off-putting for a listener without the acquired tastes for such things, spending a moment with the songs will have you bobbing your head, singing along and appreciating the musicality and ingenuity of the outfit.
Whereas the first song, “Mirror Mosh” bangs like an SST/AmRep baby, the second track, “Shitical Darlings” sounds like The Raconteurs if The Raconteurs wrote songs about Jack White being a fucking man-baby. Not that that’s what the song’s about, but it might be.
Just as quickly as the bombastic singalong rock of the second song ends the listener is dropped into “Lonely Petition”, a stream of consciousness, ultra-up-close and personal acoustic psychedelic confessional that does a wildly intense job of sounding like early John Frusciante (Niadra La Des era), the acoustic Alice In Chains stuff (Sap EP) and darker Blind Melon stuff (No Rain - Ripped Away Version) all at the same time.
By the middle of the album, you’re definitely hitting the musical zone where your grandmother might ask you to turn it off as it vacillates between 4 track sketches and over-dub experiments to electronic pastiches that jump from Skinny Puppy to Cop Shoot Cop-esque skronk hop and back to Casio Death Metal collages. Speaking of those moments, fans of Comets On Fire will probably dig this. Other standouts that are going directly on my personal playlists are “Lizard Boy” and the titular track, “Blessings Bestrewn”, which is just beautiful and feels like a way more organic Depeche Mode.
The album definitely has a cohesive vibe and feeling. Kudos for the mixing and mastering job on this album. Cohesiveness of listening experience is often overlooked in records where there is not a cohesive style of music being played.
There’s a 1980’s and 1990’s feeling to this recording. In the songwriting, the sonics and general vibe. This feels like it would fit well beside recordings by my neighbors in Guided By Voices or Brainiac. This would’ve been on Ipecac or K Records and would’ve been a huge hit with the big t-shirt wearing slackers of yesteryear.
~Rev