by Alex Reindl (@oldjoy_chicago)
"In time, things small always seem to double and grow," sings Matthew Gibbs, the singer and guitarist of Brooklyn, NY based Evolfo on their new album, Site Out Of Mind. The line without context is a musing on existence itself, but it also describes the rise of the band. Evolfo certainly has doubled and grown over the eleven years they have been a band, and not just in streaming counts on Spotify. They now comprise seven members total, including a baritone sax player who uses more pedals on his saxophone than most guitar players have ever even owned. They have also expanded their lyrical and musical palette over the years and now offer something new and unique, while still sounding accessible and familiar, and that is a fine line that many psych-rock/garage bands try to walk without nearly as much success as Evolfo. However it would be a mistake to categorize them as just another psych/garage band and leave it at that. There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye, no matter how soaked in acid that eye may be. Evolfo defies categorization, exemplifying their eclectic influences without robbing them blind, and blending them into something that isn't so easy to put in a neat genre box. The music speaks for itself, and on Site Out Of Mind, the music says a lot. The band itself calls it “garage-soul,” and that's definitely a nice way of tying it together, but the palette of sounds on their new record reaches far beyond garage and far beyond soul, where 70s style psychedelia a la King Crimson fuses with the guitar tones of 60s garage bands like The Sonics, backed up by a horn section that could have been plucked from a New Orleans second line brass band.
Evolfo began in 2011 in Boston, and according to the band they "all met in a very short span of time towards the end of 2010 through a series of events so intertwined and seemingly random I can only call it fate. Some might call it coincidence." Again, the same could be said about this new record, although in this case it's not events that are intertwined and vaguely colored by the aura of fate, but rather the instrumentation and the arrangements. Originally called “Evolfo Doofeht,” a reversal of “The Food of Love,” Shakespeare's inimitable way of describing music in Twelfth Night, Evolfo cut their teeth playing bombastic and bacchanalian house shows in and around Boston with a penchant for high energy and very danceable performances. Though the band may have taken six years to record and release their first album, 2017's Last of the Acid Cowboys, it certainly seems they knew exactly what they were doing, no matter how random the events may have felt to them: Last of the Acid Cowboys rang up six million streams on Spotify alone in the span of a year. However that success (and that is certainly success by any interpretation in this day and age of music) didn't go to their heads at all, and rather than inspiring them to rest on their laurels or attempt to capture lightning in a bottle a second time, it inspired them to forge ahead and do something completely new, to keep pushing their creative boundaries. Keyboardist/vocalist Rafferty Swink said the process of writing and recording Last of the Acid Cowboys was a process of unlearning musical tropes to concern themselves only with the music, and if that's the case then the process of writing Site Out Of Mind was probably all about unlearning what they learned to make the first record, because it sounds different in so many ways. It's more unique, less categorizable, and far more full feeling and sounding.
Site Out Of Mind was released on Royal Potato Family Records and was produced by the band itself, along with help from Joe Harrison, who the band collaborated with on their last record. It seems hard to believe from the stunningly tight performances and well thought out arrangements, but Evolfo recorded the entirety of the music beds for Site Out Of Mind in single takes in the attic of singer Matthew Gibbs' Brooklyn apartment. According to the band, the attic was haunted by a "seemingly benevolent spirit," and may every band in the world be so lucky to be haunted by a spirit as benevolent as the one in Matthew Gibbs attic, because the record sounds fantastic: tight, crisp drums with swelling cymbals, luxurious synths, a full round bass sound, the aforementioned tripped out saxophone run through a veritable gauntlet of pedals, jagged and angular guitars, and a distinct room sound that feels far more expansive than the Brooklyn attic it was, all conspire to create the world of the record. What stands out the most is that this isn't just a collection of jams or improvisations as one could expect from many other bands falling under the label "psychedelic/garage." These are well crafted songs, and they are expertly arranged.
The record opens with "Give Me Time," a song that is by turns quite chill, funky, relaxing, and above all strangely beautiful. It isn't strange that it's beautiful, rather the beauty itself is strange... In a very good way. Layered acoustic guitar and an inviting double part electric guitar harmony are slowly added to and expanded upon in a way that is reminiscent of an optical illusion in an M.C. Escher book. Geometric shapes that once seemed easily understood are textured to create a sonic quilt work, a blanket of sound in more ways than one. Synths and sounds rest above a slightly distorted and punchy drum beat as the soft faux-falsetto of Gibbs intones "How is it so? Years go fast and minutes go slow. How can it be? No one's come to set us free." He then demands of no one in particular (perhaps no one is there after all?) "Give me time, give me time for this life of mine, please." The song transitions into an outro riff that wouldn't sound out of place in an Egyptian themed sci-fi film as it continues swelling until the end, echoing the start of the song as layers are constantly added to the beat, creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The next song is "Strange Lights," the bizarre story of being bitten by a policeman who is foaming at the mouth and subsequently paralyzed by said bite. This is pure garage psych with a pulsating beat that almost feels like a bite on the hand itself: it's the most energetic track on Site Out Of Mind and it hits hard as the second track. An electric guitar soaked in the gunk of the Brooklyn gutters chunks into battle against a clean, almost mandolin-like acoustic guitar as the song beats forward.The harmonies on the vocals make them trance-like: "I wanna scream but I can't say nothing no I can't say nothing." Psychedelic slurp noises push the song into a hypnotic middle eight with droning synth as bright and dancing staccato electric guitars bounce frantically, leading into a guitar solo over multiple vocal harmonies. Then everything cuts out but the drums and bass and the saxophone seems to scream and moan in a way that the subject of the song clearly wants to do but is unable to because he "... was bitten by a police man who left teeth marks in the back of my hand." Apparently inspired by a violent altercation with police, it's an experience that has clearly left a mark, not just on Gibbs but on the album as well, and the record may be all the better for it. It's the only song that doesn't quite fit with the chill spaciness on the rest of the album, but the energy it brings feels deserved and possibly even necessary.
After "Strange Lights" Site Out Of Mind really begins to hit its stride. "Zuma Loop" exhorts us to "harmonize internally, cast no shadows," while also musing over a narcotic backbeat "what a dream life can seem, unwinding so slowly." The music again mirrors the sentiment in the lyrics expertly. The song is vague, eerie, haunting, and subdued with a hypnotic haze descending over you as you soak into the dripping guitars and the funky bass. This leads naturally into "Blossom in Void," one of the strongest songs on the record. "Towers rise, towers fall... find yourself before you damn it all. I've been searching as the sun cuts the sky, know you're hurting but I don't know why." This is one of the poppiest songs on the record as well, it's catchy in a way that gets inside you deeply, it's obviously more than just the melody that will stick in your brain. It's strangely sad and disaffected without being nihilistic, and it's honestly emotional. It has a lovely way of capturing a kind of glaze settled over everything like a humid, cloudy day. These are clouds the sun might not be able to break through. It has a weight to it, a physical feeling, like the morning after a long party that has robbed you of all your serotonin, and you're wandering around through gray streets waiting for sunset, not really going anywhere at all but still feeling this nagging pull in the back of your brain, you know you have somewhere to be, you're just not sure where. It's one PM but you're just now waking up. "In the light of another setting sun, we can feel the end but we don't know when it comes." Poignant words over music, and then, "In the midnight glistening, I can still get down, down, down... and the sorrow stays above me, below me, in this hollow that remains." Its reminiscent of the semi-apocalyptic feeling that comes with a hangover along with the sickly sweet knowledge that in another midnight you can "party" your way back into interminable sadness. There's something anonymous above you that loves you, but at the end of the day you know something final is approaching and there's only so much putting off that can be done. The song is a heavy hitter. After the main part of the song comes a Miami Vice-like outro in which synth parts blossom over and into each other, the musical visualization of the aforementioned sunset, sinking lazily into the darkening horizon, city lights blinking on as the light in the sky disappears into red, then purple, then black.
These songs are just the beginning of Site Out Of Mind, and the rest of the ride is no less pleasant, matching intensity with grooves, pushing forward, pulling back, but always staying interesting. Superficially reminiscent of bands like Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, and Foxygen, it has a very different emotional core and on first listen doesn't really call anything else to mind. There are nods to sixties garage music, seventies prog, and modern day neo-psych stuff but at the end of the day Evolfo remains a sonically insular world unto itself: pleasantly familiar and yet totally unique. There's something different going on with each song, but they are unified by a personality and lyrical voice that rewards repeat listens.
"Let Go" opens with a buttery synth and a guitar that sounds like an electric razor run through a box fan, "Orions Belt" comes at you with flanged drums and cymbals but quickly moves into a King Gizzard-esque prog blast as the bass pedals on octaves along to the kick-snare break beat for two minutes with no words whatsoever. "Drying Out Your Eyes" is frenetic garage psych, while "White Foam" is a vaguley Beatles-esque acoustic trip, but is also strangely haunting, kind of like if "Across the Universe" was a children's lullaby sung to plague ridden infants of the fourteenth century as they slowly withered away. It's a wildly cinematic ride into either outer space or the depths of your own psyche, but it's definitely a ride worth taking. It gives you a lot to think about and a lot to feel, but it never tells you exactly what those feelings and thoughts should be. That's for you to find out when you put it on.
Philosophical ideas abound on this record, mirroring the complexity of the arrangements. It isn't just myopic navel gazing or pseudo intellectual babbling, and it's not overly self-aware or pretentious either. It's not always important to make a huge statement on a rock record, but it's certainly more engaging when there's something there to dig in to beyond the sound itself, and there's a pleasantly surprising amount of introspection going on here. It's not surprising to me that the record was inspired as much by a group psychedelic trip the band all took together as much as by sci-fi films and psych rock albums. Evolfo strikes me as the kind of group who believes that a band that trips together rips together... and they certainly do rip. This is definitely a record you can trip to, but there are more than lush soundscapes and cinematic arrangements to enjoy here, and this record sounds just as good walking down a street on a gray and rainy day as it presumably sounds in a dark, sweltering attic haunted by a benevolent spirit while under the influence of consciousness altering substances. It's not quite pop music, but the melodies are catchy and infectious without falling into retro clichés. It is a soundtrack for experiences, and it invites you to experience itself, and the world, with mindfulness and presence. Although the concept of love isn't ever explicitly alluded to, and the word is never mentioned once on the album, the feeling of love weaves its way through the entire record. It's obvious that love went into the making of the record, love of music, love of ideas, love for the audience, and that comes through on the other end. Evolfo comes to us bearing sonic gifts in the name of love. It certainly wouldn't hurt to accept them.