Just about everything J. Mascis has touched is a product of exemplary consistency. Dinosaur Jr., even after over two decades of performing together, tricked listeners into believing it was '91 all over again with 2009's Farm, which reinforced the trio's undying instrumental dexterity without asserting nostalgia. In his solo ventures and albums with Mike Watt and Georg Berz as the Fog, Mascis draws attention to songwriting with relatively more palatable execution. Drumming for the King Tuff-fronted Witch is another story, in which he provides tightly wound rhythms to drive the band's hi-octane delivery of stoner rock.
Heavy Blanket is in the vein closest to Witch: a virtuous deluge of heavy psych dependent on interplay. This adept musicianship hadn't come about just recently. While performing with Deep Wound, Mascis sought to form a band devoid of pretension and unfastened from the inhibitions customary with songwriting. In this endeavor he met two weed-toking ex-band nerds, Johnny Pancake and Pete Cougar, who would soon be enlisted as the rhythm section for Heavy Blanket. After having written six songs together and in the midst of recording, Pancake was incapacitated after a swimming-related head injury, and a dismayed Cougar later joined the furniture business with his uncle.
After 27 years, Mascis crossed paths with Pancake at a ski retreat, and the two managed to locate Cougar with Ohio prison records as their guide. With the help of a cassette (the only existing recording of the band) the three-piece reinterpreted every song for a fully established debut. Deeming them "songs" is even a stretch; the product is more or less comprised of exercises and is perhaps one of the most grueling workouts expressed in music. Heavy Blanket is more immersing than it is taxing, however. Fluent grooves ensorcell Pancake and Cougar as Mascis's saturated solos envelop the band, tirelessly strangling the upper frets and wringing out hyper-melodic squeals. It would take nothing short of LP-appropriate time limitations to make Heavy Blanket cease from their knee-deep jamming, which is not only admirable of Mascis and co., but it prompts inescapable headbanging as well.
[Heavy Blanket Facebook]
[Buy Heavy Blanket from Outer Battery Records]
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