SENTRIES - Gem of the West
Eau Claire Records
SENTRIES' third album Gem of the West, according to SENTRIES Bandcamp, is 'an album about the place where I grew up, among other things.' The spaces which the mind and body grew from and grew into, somewhere between the dirt and the stars.
Environment shapes the mould, experience sets it.
SENTRIES Bandcamp reads: "Dedicated to toothless the leopard gecko, bolder than any two-legged man."
Snow as a Metaphor for Death is the SENTRIES album that crossed paths with me early in 2024. The points of influences - Gilla Band, Shame, The Jesus Lizard- that I picked up on said to me that the right things were being input in order to really output. What you pay attention to will come back to you, make sure it's worth it.
Gem of the West mechanically ticks and clicks to life. It builds, as if an ice-riddled code, knot or lock is coming undone. Piece-by-piece it falls apart and simultaneously comes together - as if to fall into place. A jigsaw that makes a different picture as the old one is packed up. Guitars, one-by-one, join forces to jangle up-and-down side-by-side. Stare into its big wet eyes, but don't stare too long, you may just never return.
'Crack the code and keep it for. Crack the code and keep it for. Crack the code and keep it for. Crack the code and keep it for yourself'. Hold it tight. Soak it in. This may never come your way again. Cherish what's yours. Even if it was never meant to float through your sphere.
'The Cowboy's Carcass" was a lead single in the records run-up. It sits in second place as it did in singles release position. The twinkly keys/synthesized bits that backup the rise-and-fall guitar feel like a dreamstate, like your being is trapped inside a Vegas casino with no air-conditioning. Sweltering indoors. The cowboy's carcass is moving through the gates.
Sadistic mindstates. Unstable psyches. Peg-legged perspectives. The code that was coming together-undone on the opening track builds once more on "I Can, and I Will". A driving force propels the track through its runtime.
"They've got the nerve to crack jokes in my expense?"
"Red Eye Removal" is the first track that makes use of acoustic guitar as centrepiece, as far as I can tell. It's a refreshing break from the intensity already set. Squid are a band that comes to mind while "Red Eye Removal" moves through itself.
The shortest track on the album takes the form of the 90-second "Dungeon Crawler". Usually the shortest track on an album of intense characteristics serves as some sort of breather. Not on Gem of the West, you'll find it to be quite the opposite.
With a robust, gritty groove, the menacing energy of lead single "Charmed Houses" rolls out of "Dungeon Crawler".
Penultimate track "I Saw Someone Die in Sudbury, ON" is of a reflective disposition. Like a river, it meanders. It catches the leaves that fall and brings them to their final resting place. It sways. It sees itself and understands itself. External forces can't define it.
"I told Johnny Carson about my divorce, and I told Seth Meyers about my brothers dead horse."
The 8-minute closer "Nails" is home to a bittersweet essence - as if things soured over time between two entities. You grow together or you grow apart, there is no other way. I will scream no more. The race has been run. The course complete. Tired is an understatement. A thousand years of sleep couldn't put me back together again. A crushing guitar solo rears its head, shrieking, squealing as if being pressured through a space the size of a pin-prick. "Nails" feels like a definitive closer; a final page strongly slapped back on the book to signify completion. The desk is stood up from, and stepped away from.
“I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be human.”
Written, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by Kim Elliot(SENTRIES), we have a master musician and musical mind at hand right here.
