White Hills - Frying On This Rock

White Hills brought to mind The Heads when I first began playing this album. The vocals didn’t do it for me but I liked the title and its number of possible meanings so persevered. Happily this was rewarded by the band starting to sound like Mudhoney on one of their more psyched up tunes by track 3 (‘You Dream You See’).

Familiarity with the five songs has brought with it by this point (three weeks or so since taking delivery) a level of recognition which I'd describe as general appreciation rather than actively liking any of them to the extent that I'd remember them to stick on a playlist or the such. I've gone through a phase of seeking out more new Space- and Stoner Rock in general through exposure to the band so they can at least be thanked for that as those are genres I'd not dabbled with for the last couple of years (in fact more likely from when Monster Magnet came off the drugs. You can't really top Superjudge when it comes to this sort of thing).

'Robot Stomp' is the first of the album's two tracks that surpass the ten minute mark and it has nothing to offer in terms of innovation, ideas or hooks. It's plain and simple a dirge of the dullest and most self-absorbed type. Penultimate tune 'Song of Everything' disappears into its own black hole for practically half of its eight minute length and the wait for it to come back out is hardly riveting. Things close out with the 14 minute 'I Write A Thousand Letters (Pulp On Bone)', the literal accomplishment of which would be a far more enjoyable task than listening to the musical representation of said activity. As I said then a general appreciation - nine and a bit decent minutes out of a possible 44.