Clutch were born in 1991 as an angry, lyrically motivated hardcore Punk band; their metamorphosis has seen them experiment with Blues, Jazz and hard Rock, which is highly commendable and a donned cap in their direction is more than required. Clutch is Clutch, and if it wasn’t with previous album ‘Earth Rocker’, then ‘Psychic Warfare’ is here to affirm that they are no longer afraid to create a familiar sounding Clutch-esque groove, and it’s good to see.
After all this time, Clutch can basically do what they want lyrically and have probably exhausted a variety of subject matter, leaving ‘Psychic Warfare’ discussing crazy and mind boggling oddities such as energy weapons, paranoid neurosis and three legged mules. Clutch have always been prone to the bizzare but this is setting the bar high, like Cheech and Chong high.
Rather than starting cold with ‘X-Ray Visions’, ‘The Affidavit’ provides the aural prologue inspired by a Jazz and Blues awards ceremony that Fallon witnessed whilst on an off day from their recent tour. The sounds of clinking china, glasses and the hubbub of voices provides the backdrop for frontman Fallon to ask the person portrayed in ‘X-Ray Visions’ “what the hell is going on?”.
Initially the music was written but it had no lyrics and it was a self-confessed problem child until the rhyming couplet of, “the first thing I did was buy a pack of smokes, check in to a motel and consult my horoscope”. Lyrically the song looks at Clutch’s experience of motels where unexpected situations often occurred. Fallon would analyse people in the parking lot and even push his ears to the walls to check out the neighbours, who sometimes paid daily rates. What were they running from? This paranoid and fantastical delusion inspired the song in which Fallon surveys with his ‘X-Ray Visions’.
The album song titles are pretty wacky with ‘Sucker For The Witch’, ‘Doom Saloon’ and ‘Behold The Collosus’ summoning visions of a crack pipe wielding Willy Wonka whispering names for his latest novelette. ‘A Quick Death In Texas’, the last song to be written on the album is heavily influenced by ZZ Top and roughing it in the country with a bunch of chickens, which for Fallon, a city dwelling urbanite, freaked the hell out of him. Complete with dead tree teepees, the cabin inspired a madness in him that resulted in him sitting the night out with a flash light and a knife. The extreme and opposite events provided the muse for a song that is full of Texan swagger and raucous bar brawl Rock, the jagged guitars an ode to Billy Gibbons’ delicious runs.
‘Our Lady Of Electric Light’ sounds like it was made for a young John Travolta film where he just smokes and looks cool personified while ‘Noble Savage’ picks up the baton of ferociousness; the consummate ease of Clutch to produce good ol’ Rock and Roll; the funk of ‘Your Love Is Incarceration’ enhancing their ability to blend and master an array of genres.
For a band that have played over 100 gigs per year for nearly 25 years, the unique songsmanship, energy and love for what they do still shines through bright. Here’s to another quarter century of faultless musical peculiarity.
DAVE BULL