Station Grey Records

Marble Son finds musical partners Jesse Sykes and Phil Wandscher taking things just a little bit further than they ever have before, with the end result being what might result from Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings going on an acid bender.

I mean, this album cries out for headphones as loudly as anything I’ve put an ear to in a long, long time, boys and girls. Over here you have thunderous passages of guitar straight out of an over-the-top Quicksilver Messenger Service jam circa 1967; over here you have mists of murmuring vocals that swirl from the shadows out into the foreground and away up into the night sky; underneath is a rhythm section that vacillates between midnight at the Fillmore and tripping lightly through the daisies on a sunny afternoon; and woven in, around, and through it all is Jesse Sykes’ incredible voice, which sometimes might remind you of a slightly-reserved-but-brutally-honest Grace Slick in her prime and other times simply sounds like, well, Jesse Sykes. This is not simple music to get a hold of – but it commands your attention and makes you want to.

Besides Ms. Sykes herself, the other voices featured predominately throughout Marble Son are those of the guitars wielded by the aforementioned Mr. Wandscher (a long-time collaborator with Sykes and a former Whiskeytowner, as well), along with Sykes herself and the pedal steel stylings of guests Chris Zasche and Bill Patton. Wandscher, however, is the main stringmaster here, doling out everything from feedback-slathered layers of sharp-toned leads on the opening opus “Hushed By Devotion” to dry-as-a-bone John Lennon-style guitar work straight out of “Yer Blues” (the verses on “Pleasuring The Divine”) to moments that are simply raggedy-ass crunch (the closing jam on “Come To Mary” and the ache of “Your Own Kind”).

Even when the mood turns mellow on Marble Son, it still feels a bit unsettled. Lovely, you understand, but unsettled, nonetheless. Tunes such as “Be It Me, Or Be It None”, “Weight Of Cancer”, “Birds Of Passerine” and the album-closing “Wooden Roses” all come across like tension-filled cousins of the Dead’s “Mountains Of The Moon”. They are all blessed with English country garden beauty but any one of them feels like it could explode into a shower of sparks and nostril-burning amp ozone at any moment. (SPOILER ALERT: they never do; they remain sweet and pretty and gentle and … just a wee bit troubled.)

I’m not even sure what Sykes and company were trying to achieve with Marble Son – I just know that they must have nailed it to end up with music that sounds this sure of itself. Impossible to categorize (the “Welch and Rawlings on acid” thing was my best shot at it), this is music that deserves to be listened to.

Headphones optional, but recommended.