Chewing Pine

Religious Knives – The Door (Ecstatic Peace, 2008)

If one can look past the grand platitude that is the title of this disc, it holds a half an hour of often times ambient, psych inspired rock. The quartet recently released Resin in April on Brooklyn’s No Fun Productions. And while that disc possesses a tranquil psyche leaning, recording this new slab under the tutelage of Thurston Moore serves to differentiate the two releases. The Door begins to portray a weak penchant for song craft. One can attribute that new subtlety to the company the Religious Knives now keep or merely as an advancement – an exploration. Ambiance though is what the music of the Religious Knives strives for and that explains such lyrical shortcomings as, “You’re straight as a river.”

Given the sparse lyrical content and a tendency towards repetitive rock tropes, the group, and this disc specifically, will occasionally be categorized as experimental. Neither are. Religious Knives obviously draw from a wide range of psych influenced groups. Minimal would be a more apt adjective – it’s not minimalism, but The Door at points, as on the waltz of “On a Drive”, comes dangerously close.

What Religious Knives do well is work simplistically with the instrumentation that they have; which is to say, they’re set up in the fashion of a sixties rock group – organ and all. Being able to vary time signature (“The Storm”) allows the same instruments to take on various voicings to delineate one song from the next. Nate Nelson’s drumming moves from a motorhythmic style to a primitive thud – like the Cramps if they didn’t swing – over the course of the six tracks.

The band is sloppy even given the rhythm section perpetually being in sync. Hearing the introductory riff to “Basement Watch” recalls the Dead getting ready to jump into a blues number, but not being quite ready yet. That aspect to the Religious Knives though, shouldn’t deter new era psyche foragers. In comparing the Knives, its peers are evident: Psychic Ills and Wooden Shjips. But to limit a dissection of this band to that is simply dismissive. There is something sparklingly shambolic about the groans that these folks work out. And in the group’s evolution, listeners may find the Knives capable to craft a lyrical hook while holding onto the intangible elements of its sound.