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Issue
#63
June '04
About a year ago we came
into ownership of the CD, Rays To The Sun,
by a band called Jellyshirts. It
grabbed us, it possessed us, and
– to quote our friend Julie – it “put me
[us] in a place.” A Lou Reed
Velvet Underground tempered by The Byrds style takes you away on a pick
and soar musical
magic carpet ride. It didn’t matter what frame of mind we
were in: whenever we
inserted this disc into the player, we were able to melt into the
mellow, yet intense
groove. We knew Rays To The Sun was
an IndepenDisc Feature, the problem
was: this CD was
released in 1995 and the Jellyshirts
were no
longer a band.
That didn’t
stop us from tracking down the Jellyshirts
leader Bret Logan, who now fronts The Bret
Logan Band
in New Haven, CT,
and convincing him that even though the CD is 9 years old, the music
still holds up and is relevant enough to let people out there know
about this remarkable
achievement.
Take the opening song
“Everybody’s
Home.” It uses a galloping
rhythm to spit out an outline of the blissful
everyday existence of an ordinary family with seemingly random lyrics
that don’t
quite connect with the story. The song makes sense in that we all need
to provide our own
happiness in whatever artistic culture we heed. Here we have a
collision where the artist
finds that those in earshot of his proclamations (subject matters and
us the listeners)
cross paths of happy bliss within his orbit. Again, it is the Lou Reed
vocals and the
Byrds-like pick and soar that welcome us into a place…
“Darkless” then
escorts us down the hall.
Surf tempos glide into a British Invasion acid trip linked with a
Psychedelic Furs style
“beautiful chaos.” Gorgeous guitar work dances on
the sand as the lava light is
projected onto the backdrop screen in one of those Warhol-esque visual
art statements
– the music alone allows these visuals to dominate our
senses and we’re surfing in beautiful music colors, not as
edgy as true surf, but
just as intense…
It seems these songs
build to “Disinclined,”
the core song that balances this CD at the top (while “Truly”
- we’ll get to that in a minute - holds it’s place
near the end). A distant
October era U2 jam builds to a full onslaught that is just soooooo
intense. Once again,
Bret’s vocals push buttons that send us into an exotic
adventure that has the
hormones a hoppin’. It’s here that Scott
McDonald’s drums bring out how
important they are to this whole disc. With a crispness of Keith
Moon’s Baba
O’Riley, McDonald’s drumming propels the whole
structure of this cacophony,
allowing it to take advantage of a Van Halen style breakdown. It is
here that we melt and
the Jellyshirts have us eating out
of their
musical hands. We’re just diggin’ this Woodstock
era production technique of
laying in a complete conversation-like vocal being swallowed whole by
the jamming groove
so much, that the buttons pushed bring to mind Cream and Zeppelin, and - BAM the doors are blown
in – Eight minutes
of heavy duty psychedelic musical sex that started with a ringing
endorsement, a la
foreplay, and climaxed with the band attempting to pump us back up
again until they
deliberately cut it short. Whew, hit repeat and do it again, and again,
and again…
“Untitled” drops us
back on the musical
sidewalk of this place and merrily walks us up to a woman that is
willing to embrace the
joy and beauty of the day - Dig the hooks and the way the Jellyshirts work the hooks, with a
Rickenbacker
style lead and a bass line that subtly lifts and carries us along to
the vocal refrain of
“Let’s play,
Let’s play, Let’s
play.” – It’s a representation
of relationships and music that wraps
its arms around us and holds us close.
It’s here that
we understand the place the Jellyshirts
have allowed us to enter. They stretch
the boundaries of what they bring to us by giving us 60s garage rock
with a bounce (“Tease”),
a spacey Pink Floyd-ish,
heroin-era Velvet Underground, while hopped up on methamphetamine
vignette of supremacy
(“God”),
and a solid muse (“Went
Walking”). All of these enforce the
timelessness of the album.
But it’s
“Truly”
that bookends with “Disinclined”
and pushes this disc to heights reserved for the cerebral pounding of
such beautiful,
delicate guitar and rhythm work that was typical of Billy Corgan at the
height of the
Smashing Pumpkins. “Truly”
channels the Pumpkins
“Porcalina of the vast oceans” with a breathy vocal
proclaiming “Truly, I love you.”
A slow, trance inducing
build eventually breaks over the wall with such force that the Jellyshirts unique amping fashion sweeps
us along
into a blissful euphoria. Using guitar-box pedal distortion aided by
gadgets and gizmos,
the Jellyshirts put forth a 60s
mentality to
musical art and expression that launches us into the stratosphere of
that culture -
solidly reminiscent of Stomu Yamashta’s
“GO.” - The mind expansion
delights.
As “Suns With You”
ushers out this CD using an
intentionally over-produced and distorted bleed, we are left to ponder
how this forty-six
minutes of escapism slipped through the cracks back in 1995. Obviously
no one was
listening. Well, years later, we here at IndepenDisc
are listening, and we’re so into “Rays
To
The Sun” that we want to turn you on to the Jellyshirts and let them ‘put
you in a
place’ no matter what decade it is.
Rays To The Sun by Jellyshirts
available now for $9.98 + s/h*
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