The Bevis Frond - Inner Marshland (Reckless)

The British have always had an edge when in comes to top-flight psychedelia and acid rock. Bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine pioneered the precedence for others to follow. Opening the Doors of Perception once more for late millennial American acts like The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Bardo Pond, Londoner Nick Saloman, under the nom de cachet The Bevis Frond, reconciled the vintage trappings of the argot with a post-punk viscerality. He did it largely as a one-man enterprise, recording much of his earlier material at a DIY studio in his rented flat. This album, his second, is one of his best. The invocational “Cries of the Inner Marshland” gives a mescaline-tinged fix on Saloman’s attic coordinates with sonar blips piercing through a percolating froth of bong water and back-masking guitar arpeggios dovetailing into shimmering flange effects. “Termination Station Grey” expands from a low-fi passion pop center with more fuzz tone guitar, stereo-channeled vocals and the rhythmic push of murky drums. Keening Farfisa organ fuels “Window Eye” as Saloman once again layers thickly striated slabs of riffage over stoned-out hallucinogenic lyrics that recall the work of his countryman Lewis Carroll. Inserted between are a motley assortment of humorous skits and samples in which he adopts a small cadre of alter-egos. My favorite of these: a scratchy LP-lifted quote from The Riddler that presages “Defoliation Part Two.” “I’ve Got Eyes in the Back of My Head” finds Saloman making like Bob Mould circa Metal Circus, a tsunami-sized wave of feedback trailing his ten-story tall stereo-bifurcated licks. “Medieval Sienese Acid Blues” takes the laconic rock-star conceit even further as coarse-grained blues chords spool out from both sides of the stereo spectrum and Saloman filters his nasalized voice through some sort of reverb mic attachment for added attitude. But some of the most impressive and excessive fretwork flames on during the long-form melodic masterpiece “Once More.” The 1988 cd version of the album appends three cuts from Bevis Through the Looking Glass including the nearly 20-minute lysergic jam “The Shrine” to the original album.