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Strange Cousins From The West cover. Amazon.com
7/7/2009. A day in awesomeness in which Clutch will reign over us with a wicked new album.
I've come into posession of an advance copy of the new album from Clutch, and needless to say, I'm really impressed so far. Upon first listen, I very quickly got reacquainted with the two songs I heard them perform live from this album. I have to say, so far, it's leaps and bounds improved.
From the moment the CD starts, the stoner rock that Clutch have become famous for kicks in, a mix of blues, shoegazing and arena rock greatness. It lets you know that you are in for a 45-minute trip of awesomeness. While it fails to capture a moment in the vein of Dark Side of the Moon or Quadrephenia, it does capture a moment in a band, a band that had a rough struggle from New England-centric obscurity.
I don't like to compare albums to earlier ones a lot, but it works here, comparing to Pure Rock Fury comes to mind. The band's 2001 breakout album has a lot of hiccups and is all over the place with feeling and vibe. The mixing is rough and sporadic at best. It had a couple great hits from it, and some other songs that were pretty good. Atlantic dropped them from the label after poor sales. A lot of it might have stemmed from the poor mixing, the feeling and mix changed constantly on that album. Eight years later, this album has a more cohesive feel, you don't get lost in the mix changes and different producers on the tracks. Probably because there are no producer changes, and the mix is the same sound from track to track. While most may agree that this loses any street cred they had because it was such a rough mix, one would have to counter that on this album, at least, you can hear all the aspects of the songwriting, which is very powerful here, and hasn't left any of their old style by the wayside. 50,000 Unstoppable Watts is a song about radio stations that challenge the norm and play whatever they feel like, and for those who like the style of The Body of John Wilkes Booth, there is a song on here called Abraham Lincoln, which has a lot of the same feel and look at the subject matter at hand.
This is the band's first studio album on their latest label, Weathermaker Records. The first album on this label was Full Fathom Five, a live album from several different locations, which will most likely get featured here as well.
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