Dispossession (Mike Wexler)

Chronique

The air of gentle psych rock drift that Mike Wexler's 2012 album Dispossession has from the start certainly doesn't make any effort to be anything else: drawn-out airy keyboards straight from Sonic Boom's first solo effort, easygoing grooves, soft whispered vocals. No surprise, then, that the second song on the album is called "Spectrum," which might as well be an overt tip of the hat to the former Spacemen 3 co-leader. But the nice thing about Dispossession, regardless of some initially obvious roots, is that it's just accomplished enough as an amalgam -- not entirely groundbreaking but definitely enjoyable as a collective reworking of impulses, with Wexler and a variety of guest players creating an enjoyable little treasure in its own right. Thus on "Spectrum," when the song's vocal melody suddenly shifts in a break almost like a straight-out pop hook, Wexler first serves notice that he's not simply going to follow one path when more are available. That ends up being a bit of a model for the rest of the album, with a similar shift into a brighter, almost sunnier sound following a moodier start on other songs such as "Lens." "The Trace," meanwhile, shifts toward a completely different style simply by virtue of removing the keyboard glaze in favor of a sparer, more focused arrangement defined by understated melody, while "Glyph," in turn, strips down to an acoustic guitar at the start before building the arrangement back up again.

© Ned Raggett /TiVo